Cloverfield

Cloverfield isn't for everybody. If you get motion sickness easily, the intentionally rough camera work could easily get to you, and if you tend to overreact to stuff like 9/11 parallels or endings that don't say "And this is what happened to everybody!", you might not like it. I'll be honest, I didn't think about the 9/11 attacks once while watching it. The similarities are there; disaster hitting New York City, buildings crumbling, people running, and the film is shot as if it's a home video. But I was just thinking about how effective it was as a way to depict a horrific event, it never seemed like they were trying to milk the connection for a cheap thrill. Any complaints about things being unresolved are from people who missed the point; the entire movie never breaks "character", it's supposed to be a home video of the attack found by the government and used for analysis, with no additions or stupid epilogues to add closure. I found it to be tremendously well-done in this regard, and I was impressed by how well they added details naturally by methods such as intermittent clips of previously recorded footage that was supposedly overwritten during the filming.

The style itself isn't the whole movie, although it's a bigger part than it would be most of the time. I thought they did a good job in the beginning of setting the scene and introducing the important characters before the monster attacks, some would say that part was overlong but it made it more real and got the job done. It's a pretty short movie, so they had to establish the relationships quick enough that the emotional impact would be there when bad things happen. The acting wasn't great, a lot of the dialogue was very repetitive and simple, although again, it all made sense for what the movie was. If you were in the middle of a city being destroyed by a gigantic, rampaging monster, you might say "Oh my God!" over and over again too. There's some humor there in some of the interactions in less stressful situations, a lot of it provided by Hud, the guy who's holding the camera the whole time. The monster itself and other unfortunate things are impressively designed and animated, and I liked how there were very few clear shots of what they looked like, as the characters were more concerned with their own safety than perfect footage. The camera itself is a character, showing us only enough to arouse our curiosity and being useful in more than one way. I wouldn't say the movie ever scared me, but it was certainly a thrilling, exciting, fun story told in an incredible way.

By the way, there's something after the credits, I don't recommend waiting because you won't get much out of it, but after seeing it, you should definitely look up what was there.