Cloverfield

Title: Cloverfield (15)

Year: 2008

Running Time: 85 minutes

Director: Matt Reeves

Cast: Mike Vogel (Jason Hawkins), Jessica Lucas (Lily Ford), Lizzy Caplan (Marlena Diamond) Notes: Won five awards.

Rating: 6

Thoughts:   A group of friends throw a surprise leaving party for one of the group, before finding New York under attack from a giant monster. This then becomes a fight to survive.

This starts with a succession of handheld camera clips and that quickly gets irritating as they chop between the ideas. I had more or less had enough of them when the story arc takes us to an apartment.

There the camera gets handed to one character. And then he uses it from then on. All the time. It's ridiculous. Even when they are being attacked, multiple times, he continues to film.

They have embraced the lost footage idea and just can't let it go, but it makes the film unrealistic. What's more annoying is that the acting is actually quite good.

The story plays out well, the monster is great, and it feels bleak. But the camera style is infuriating. At times it's a great way of bringing in drama and excitement but it is overused. And so often it is just illogical for the character, albeit he is quite thick, to keep holding it.

This has a lot going for it but the lost footage style is not great for the whole film and would have been better spliced with regular shots.