Cloverfield: Do I Even Need to Give the Spoiler Warning

There is so much to this movie, it's not even remotely funny. Movies like this are why I love J.J. Abrams so much. Everything is so involved and in-depth and thought out. For a movie that appears to be shot completely on a hand held digital camera, it was extremely professional and exceedingly awesome.

The next sentence is going to sound crazy, but hear me out. Cloverfield was ridiculously realistic. If a giant monster invaded New York city, this is what it would be like. In this day and age, everyone is filming and documenting everything that happens, so it is entirely within reason that something like this would exist after such a catastrophe (excluding, perhaps, the scene where Hud, the camera man, gets eaten by the monster and the camera continues to work after it spits him out*). The characters were, I thought, endearing, and I cared about what happened to them. I was glad they used mostly unknown actors (although when I went to look them up on IMDB, I learned that most of them have extensive TV experience at least - CSIs and Law and Orders and so on). It was less distracting and made the documentary style more believable.

At the theater, there were signs everywhere with a warning about potential motion sickness that could be caused by watching Cloverfield. Personally, I didn't think it was that bad, but I also don't get sick easily. Sometimes I had to close my eyes because they were jerking the camera around and it was sort of distracting, but I was fine. I went to see it by myself (as I am wont to do when a nerd movie comes out that no one will see with me) and it was only after it started that I realized oh, this movie could potentially scare the crap out of me, and I am here by myself. Fortunately, it wasn't that bad. There were some disturbing parts, to be sure, but my reactions were mostly "holy crap! (freaked out laughter)" and "oh my gosh! (more freaked out laughter)." I didn't even have nightmares, even though the monster was completely terrifying.

THE MONSTER. Holy crap. The awesomeness of this thing is indescribable. You seriously have to go see it. I wonder if I can find a decent picture online... I doubt it. But it completely exceeded my expectations. You know how on Lost, they hinted at there being some kind of terrifying creature-like thing in the forest, and then they never show it, and then finally, they show... something in the third season (is that when they first showed it?) and it's... a pillar of smoke? WHAT?! Okay, but that's not what this is like. First of all, you definitely do not have to wait until the end to catch a glimpse of it. They show it, and then they show it again, and then they REALLY show it. You don't see it repeatedly, you just get glimpses of it here and there, but they're GOOD glimpses. They did that on purpose, of course - if you get to look at it for a long enough time, you stop being scared of it. Well, the fright never wears off. And I don't know if this is just me, but I'm still not totally sure what it looks like in its entirety. I know it has more than four appendages, and it has a weird looking head... someone drew this, which admittedly looks awesome, but that's not what the monster looks like. I don't think that one would be as scary anyway, because it looks like a whale, and whales are sort of slow moving, and they tend not to eat people. The Cloverfield monster definitely eats people.

I've heard that some people are complaining about the ending, but I don't see any other realistic way of finishing the movie. Here's what happened - Rob and Beth are the only two people left from the original group that started out at the beginning. The rest are dead (I think that Lil died, because they said on the radio that all helicopters were down, including the one she had escaped on). They're in Central Park, and they're hiding under a bridge, caught in the crossfire as the military is trying unsuccessfully to bomb the monster to death. Rob is talking to the camera, telling it who he is, where they are, who of his friends had died because of the monster. He turns the camera to Beth, who is crying, and he gently tells her to tell the camera who she is. As she's doing that, a bomb hits the bridge, and they drop the camera... it's underneath some rubble, and you can just see some rocks covering it. The last thing you hear between them: "Beth, look at me. I love you." "I love you too." And then another bomb hits, the camera cuts out, and it goes to the tape it had been taping over the whole time, which was taken when Rob and Beth were on Coney Island on a ferris wheel. They're filming themselves, and Rob asks Beth if she had anything to say to the camera, and Beth says "I had a good day."

HOW is that not the only ending this movie could have had? You want to find out what the monster is? Yeah, well so did they. We were seeing what they saw, experiencing what they experienced, and finding out what the monster was, where it came from and what it wanted was not part of the story this movie set out to tell.

Besides, you can read all of that on Wikipedia. Here is the page about the monster. J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves have given plenty of interviews explaining some of the things they left out of the movie.

I adored this movie. It is brilliant. There is just the right balance between mystery and revelation that lets it come full circle and tell a flipping good story. I highly recommend it.

*I was confused at this part, because - if the monster was eating people, why would he spit him out again? Did he just taste bad? I don't think so. When Hud and the camera get spit back out and the monster leaves, the camera is focusing only on Hud's head - which I think seems to indicate that it is only his head that got spit out. You know, like how you spit the pits out of cherries. It would also explain the horrified screams coming from Rob and Beth. Also, morbidly, on Hud's myspace page, his height changed from whatever his height was before to 2'6" the day the movie aired.