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Could, no, actually Does contain spoilers for Cloverfield!
What the.. alright, this is a little bit of a negative review on Cloverfield. I can only explain myself if I spoil bits of the movie, so don’t click this one open if you haven’t seen it already (and plan to go and check it out).

So before we went out to the cinema, we looked up the runtime of Cloverfield. It’s not something we usually do, but we heard it was only 80 minutes long. Actually it was 85 minutes, but still, that’s less than your average bad comedy these days. The movie is shot entirely with a hand-held video recorder, which this bash is mostly about. So yeah, 85 minutes does seem feasible with such a camera, as DV-Tapes (they say there’s a tape in the cam, it’s not a HDD recorder) usually run for 60 minutes. Or 90 if you put it on LP. The actual movie was shot with this camera:

That’s the Panasonic HVX200 which of course does shoot in HD, and looks like a bigger camera than they try to make you believe in the movie. I guess some bits were actually shot with a smaller camera (where you see the reflection of the ‘camera-man’ in a window or something). So, this movie starts with some text saying ‘video footage found at site US-249 formerly known as ‘Central Park’…’ - right, this indicates the video was found by someone, cataloged and now shown to us. This is how the movie plays the whole time. It starts with some character development (the tape was recorded over a date-video from two of the main characters, so when they play back something in the movie, you see some of the old footage which is pretty realistic as this would happen with a real camera too). I thought the whole character development was a bit pushed. It took very long, especially when you see that the runtime is only 85 minutes.

Then the attack begins. This is where you feel like it’s going to be awesome. Except that it’s not. Yeah there is built tension, and the monster is huge and scary, but the film is shaking all over the place. This is what I didn’t like in The Bourne Ultimatum, and now a whole movie shot like this? Dude. Even my grandma can hold a camera steadier than this ‘Hud’ character (which is actually also the abbreviation for ‘Heads Up Display’). I know it’s supposed to look like amateur filming, but this is over the top. Really. Anyone can hold a camera steadier than that. I don’t get motion sick, I have no problem with roller coasters at all, but I had to focus real hard the first few minutes. Yuck.

I have to say though, that even with the camera shaking that much, the special effects were awesome. I guess it would be hard to make great special effects on a not-so-steady video, and they did a good job. The monster was very impressive, and the smaller monsters were also pretty scary. Some good scares in there. Back to the story. They are now with a group of 4 going through the streets of New York. Rob wants to find a friend of his, who he believes is trapped in her apartment. I don’t know if I would do this, with a big monster roaming the streets, and a voicemessage of my friend telling me she’s stuck under a wall or something, but that’s a different story.

All of a sudden a rocket whizzes by, and here comes the army, guns ablaze. Awesome. This was one of the best parts of the movie, and I was hoping the action would continue non-stop till the end from here. But it didn’t. They head into a metro station, and it slows down again. They decide to walk the tunnels (yeah good idea, Sherlock), and Hud ‘thinks’ there’s a light on the camera. I’m not sure, but it sounds more believable to just switch on night vision, which just about every camera from this era should have. The camera they have has it too, but they only switch it on later. This is where they meet the smaller critters.

One of the characters gets bitten but seems to feel alright. As you would expect, she of course isn’t. She starts bleeding from her eyes, and somewhere behind some screen she dies. We don’t get to see how, or why, or anything.

The group, now of 3 people head back to the streets to find this friend of Rob in her apartment. When they finally get there, she is lying there with some metal pipe pierced through her body, right next to her heart (I assume, ’cause she’s still alive). They decide to lift her up (yeah right), so she stands up. Continue a few shots later, the now ’saved’ girl is running through the streets to the choppers to be rescued! Wait. Running?! Dude you just had a pipe sticking up your shoulder/next to your heart. You can’t run!

The movie ends a bit abrupt, as is to be expected I suppose, ’cause the tape runs out. But then the credits start to roll. Why? They could’ve made some end conclusion in normal film style right? They could put like 20 to 30 minutes of extra film behind that. The point is that they start the film with ‘footage found at Central Park’, so this means there are still people alive, maybe the monster is killed? What has become of New York? Or are they setting us up for some sequel? Blegh.

Yeah I got a good scare, and some action scenes were good, but looking back at the whole, right after watching it made me come to my senses. And to be honest, it’s just a bad movie. It really is. If you don’t think so, just try recapping everything, try to think about the reasoning of the characters. I mean, go and see it sure, but don’t expect too much (and you will be in for a treat.