Cloverfield, over hyped much? Options

[dannyordinary]

I haven't seen it. My cousin said it sucked. Has anyone else seen it?

[ 700th post oh yeahhh ]

[NoSex]

Cloverfield was much better than I ever expected. The effects are amazing, the acting is on-point (although never dark or desperate enough), and the action is captivating. The detractors, I suspect, merely have a deficient imagination or patience. I mean, it's no Blair Witch Project (succulent succulent mastery), but it's still an immensely entertaining theater experience filled to the monster-loving-brim with perfect subtleties hiding in utter terror and chaos. Best movie I've seen this year, har har.

[libertie]

Cloverfield was much better than I ever expected. The effects are amazing, the acting is on-point (although never dark or desperate enough), and the action is captivating. The detractors, I suspect, merely have a deficient imagination or patience. I mean, it's no Blair Witch Project (succulent succulent mastery), but it's still an immensely entertaining theater experience filled to the monster-loving-brim with perfect subtleties hiding in utter terror and chaos. Best movie I've seen this year, har har.

Agreed 100%! Everyone in the theater (a bunch of kids on a Friday night) booed pretty much through the whole movie, but I'm seriously just under the impression that they were all too dumb to get it. If you want your typical formula for a movie with people who overact, and where the main characters miraculously survive through the end and you leave the movie with a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart, this isn't the movie for you. They follow their idea all the way through the movie and never once do they stray from the "this movie is filmed with a handheld camera and what you are watching is the tape, unedited, pulled straight from the camera". Don't expect it to end answering all your questions. Doing that would mean compromising the basic idea and I would have left feeling very disappointed in the movie.

No, it wasn't executed as well as Blair Witch, but it did leave a lot to the imagination which is at times much more terrifying than actually watching someone die and knowing the whole time that what you're seeing is special effects and way too much fake blood. Speaking of special effects, I seriously love how you aren't subjected to a million different amazing shots of this monster in which you can make out each individual wrinkle and see it blink (King Kong oh dear god). That's NOT realistic. What they did with this was perfect, not once did I think "Wow that's good for just being special effects" until AFTER the movie.

I think one thing that helped make the movie was the fact that all the actors were nameless and faceless. We don't have dramatic scenes where an actor gives a heartmelting speech right before the high point in the movie.

Anyway, I didn't read a single review, or anything, for that matter, regarding the film before I went to see it, so I just went in based on what I saw in the trailers. I thought it was going to be pretty bad, but I was pretty happy. I figure, like Nate, that any of the bad reviews for this movie exist only because the author didn't try to understand why the people behind the film made the decisions they did.

I've heard rumors of a sequel being made from a different camera, same basic principle. As far as I know, these are just speculations, though, and I guess we'll just see what happens.