Coverfield

Review by Jason Gaston

Imagine, if you will, that you are going into your first showing of The Blair Witch Project. This is before the hype got out of control and people got tired of it. Before the ending was spoiled, before the awful sequel, and before droves of self-important idiots decided that they were better and that the movie sucked. You remember what is was like to experience The Blair Witch the first time? Remember how awesomely sweet that was?

Well, if anything I can thank Cloverfield for re-creating that feeling of sheer awesomeness.... Of riding that wave of anticipation right into the theater and being delivered exactly what I was promised. Sure, the hype will get old, people will start revolting, and I'm sure some asinine moron sitting in a movie stupid office is already dreaming of a sequel, but right here and right now I have seen Cloverfield and I am more than satisfied.

You know the story. A bunch of twenty-something yuppies are having a going away party for this putz named Rob who, ironically, is leaving for Japan when a giant monster shows up and starts raining terror on the frightened little island of Manhattan. Now the survivors must evacuate the area and get away from the monster before the entire area is bombed by the army. All of this is documented on a video camera by one of the survivors.

What else can I say about it? Cloverfield delivered what it promised and in a very satisfactory way. I would not call this movie groundbreaking, but it is impressive as it blends some very shaky hand-held camera footage with some very convincing special effects to create an experience that is, while not completely new, is new enough.

I will not say that this is the perfect movie because the beginning was a drag as we were introduced to the characters and their meaningless relationships to each other, but once the first attack happens, the action begins and doesn't let up. This isn't a very effective horror movie (despite one or two jump scares) but it is an adrenaline-packed action movie that is so effectively paced that it had my heart pumping non stop. That's MY kind of cardio!

I did have my problems with this movie. One of which was the characters themselves - in particular, the cameraman Hud. Hud's role in this movie was to film everything and, even though they did explain why he was doing it (people will want to know what happened here!), his methods were questionable. If your best friend was arguing with his ex, would you film it? His dialogue was also annoying and seemingly thrown in for laughs. It didn't work.

I can already tell that this movie is going to get monstrous backlash from the public. Already I'm hearing, "Damn, Cloverfield sucked!" and so on and so forth. I'm really not sure what these people were expecting. I've heard that "it wasn't what I expected" or "it was hard to see what was going on." Allow me to help, folks... If you went into this movie expecting anything else than watching people try to escape a giant monster with a handicam, you're an idiot and if you couldn't at least deduce what was happening on screen... you're also an idiot.

Dilemma solved.

Watch it, just don't get your hopes up too high. It's a fun movie, but nothing that the hype machine has made it out to be.