I wanted to post one of these crazy testimonials that are flooding YouTube about Cloverfield. If you haven't seen them yet, check it out. They're all the same: a talking head web-cam shot of a geek saying how he "just got back from the midnight showing..."Instead, let me just say, I really loved the film, but last night I had some of the worst nightmares since 9-11. It took a couple days for it to sink into my subconscious, but it happened.
This is not a fun movie for New Yorkers. It is a fun movie for lovers of monster movies. As a New Yorker and a monster aficionado, it all evened out to a really exciting movie experience, but I will warn you it's a really challenging film to sit through for the most part. Especially the first hour. The movie is obviously playing in to our memories of the real attack on our city, and does so much more tasefully than Spielberg's disgrace War of the Worlds ever did.
After leaving the cinema on 69th and Broadway, it was even spookier to walk home through the midtown area just leveled on film.
I'm afraid the real monster though will be revealed in countless rip-offs of the shaky-cam "found footage" technique done so masterfully in Cloverfield. I predict a few television series done this way, and it's really only a matter of time before we get Monster Movie from the producers of Meet the Spartans. Ugh.
