My Review of "Cloverfield"

Cloverfield came out back in 2008. It's to believe it's been that long. When this movie first came out I was a huge fan. I don't even remember how many times I watched this movie. It was kind of kickstarted a few trends. I know the Blair Witch movie came out before this one but this was geared towards young adults.

It all starts off cleverly with some found home video footage of a young couple. They're in New York and exploring their budding love lives. We soon then cut to what seems like a little time afterwards. Here we find out that there is a different couple.

It can get quite confusing because the original couple on the video are Jason and Beth whereas the new couple are Lily and Rob. Rob is Jason's brother and the two look very close to each other. I get the two mixed up throughout the first quarter of the movie.

Lily and Rob are assigned to organized a surprise going away party for Jason. He has recently accepted a vice president position in Japan and today's his last day in New York. While organizing the party they give the camera to Hud, Jason's best friend. Hud is basically the annoying cameraman throughout the movie.

In this first act of the movie we establish the love triangles between the main characters and what their motivations are. Not too long after that there's a disaster that hits the city and it's a big one. Hud documents everything while everyone else is trying to figure out what to do next.

This movie is focused solely one Jason. He becomes an absolute sociopath on his way to save his love Beth while the rest of the gang blindly follow his lead. I remember loving the crazy adventure and chaos that ensue throughout the movie. That is still quite enjoyable. Seeing it now in 4k high definition you can definitely see some of the not so great CGI effects. Mind you this movie came out back in 2008 so I don't expect everything to look the best.

I also noticed that the acting and the direction of the movie was a little bit video game like. It was set piece to set piece like a mission based video game. As this continued I started realizing why I liked this movie so much back in the day. The dialogue and acting kind of follow suit as if these were NPC's (Non-Player Characters of a video game). I was into video games back in the day and this felt like a full blown game. It still does feel like it

While watching this movie you have to consider the time that it was created because a lot of aspects of this movie are based on the time that it was created. Cell phone technology isn't as great as it was back in the day. Internet and social media were just starting to become a thing. In some ways this movie was looking ahead of its time but in other aspects it's also a product of it's time.

The thrills and scares are still there. I kind of knew when they were coming so the shock and awe factor were diminished but they were still fun. People that haven't seen this movie before will still have a grand old time watching it. This movie is kind of well known so some of the mystery has been lost. When I first saw this movie I had no idea what was going on. The marketing team did a great job in keeping everything quiet so that we were shocked when we first saw the reveals. I hope that's the case for anyone that watches this movie. That will give you the most enjoyment.

Overall, this movie is still charming and has a lot of fun. There's still a few things you can see that they added to this movie if you watch it over and over again. I don't think it aged the best but nostalgically this still worked for me. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. Back in the day this was one of my favorites but watching it again now I can see how far we've come from movies like this.