Review of Cloverfield (2008) by David S — 27 Jan 2013

"People are gonna want to know...how it all went down.".

I love Cloverfield. It's one of those movies I can return to from time to time and it will still be as exciting and thrilling as ever. Many people may be turned off by the filming style (it's a found footage film) but if you give it a chance, it's one hell of a ride. Drew Goddard pins the script in such a way that it manages to be funny, clever, and disturbingly realistic all tied together like a nice bow on a present below a Christmas tree. The ambiguity and mysteriousness of the concept develops in such a way that the film just becomes more and more intriguing. What Cloverfield has that many movies lack is pure style, but mixed together with a realistic setting which benefits the film in ways almost impossible to describe. Whether it be a drawn carriage with an amok horse trotting plainly through what seems like a battlefield, paper falling down like snow through a destroyed city, or a severed Statue of Liberty head, there'll be unique and terrific visuals at each turn. There's tons of secrets waiting to be deciphered throughout the film like some sort of enigmatic puzzle, and it just adds to the intrigue. On a side note, all the actors are great in the film (my personal favorite is T.J. Miller as Hud) and there's not a bad one in sight, which is quite often rare for most found footage films. Don't pass this movie up, folks.