Thursday 13 November 2008

Drop the camera and run - the movie

Cloverfield is in many ways the opposite of Kate and Leopold - this film really should not work. It's a one trick gimmick - a monster movie but how original - it's all on a camcorder... By rights you should be bored after about eight minutes, even with the gene deficiency, and spend the rest of the movie shouting "drop the camera and run! drop the camera!"

This film worked for me for two reasons - firstly, it's only 90 minutes long (as it's supposedly recorded on an analogue camcorder cassette) but perfectly paced, and secondly, the director JJ Abrams is actually pretty good. It takes serious professionalism to simulate amateur filmmaking this way and still produce decent atmosphere and drama, and JJ's sense of timing is good enough to occasionally deliver actual shocks and thrills, something sadly rare in the horror genre.

3 comments:

Jigsaw said...

Yeah I liked this movie too.A lot of people seemed to put it down but it worked for me

Anonymous said...

I am going to look out for this film, it sounds very interesting.

Sci-Fi Gene said...

Thanks for both your comments - Mish it would be good to hear what you think if you do get to see it...