I went to see Cloverfield with a group of friends tonight. It wasn’t a movie I would have picked to go see on my own but it was a good chance for me to hang out with one of my friends that I don’t see that often anymore. Plus, the movie did look intriguing to me. I probably would have just Netflixed it after it left the theaters.

Anyway, Cloverfield brought a neat perspective on a monster flick, in more ways than one. The hand held camera work was pretty hard to watch at first. Mainly, the first character using the camera was just really bad at it and shot a lot of random things like feet. Much like you would expect to see from some of your friends videos All of the bad camera was intentional. It does get better but still maintains the very hand held sensation. One of my friend’s wife really didn’t like the cameras throughout the movie. However, the cinematography didn’t bother me much, must be from all my years playing first person shooters.

It is impressive that this film was made on a budget slightly more than $30 million (which in all reality it is sad that $30 million is considered a small movie budget these days). The effects were surprisingly well done and the monster is not as illusive as you would imagine from a lower budget film. The film manages to show it throughout the movie (at least once it is revealed). The monster did have one unique trait that came as a surprise to me. I’m not going to say what it is in order to avoid spoiling anything for you.

As far as the story goes, the movie doesn’t provide as much closure or details about the incident as I would like. My guess is that they’ll do something special when the film is released on DVD to address this. On the other hand, the lack of closure did make for a more interesting conclusion and it was nice to see a deviation from the typical American movie ending. Cloverfield is a relatively short movie but does provide decent character introductions and a plot.

They movie does manage to bring some humor to an otherwise non-humorous story through one of the camera guys. This humor is done well enough not to detract from what’s going on because it fits right in with one of the character’s mentality.

It is hard for me to say whether or not I liked the movie. I didn’t really have an expectations going in– mainly due to the secrecy of the story and my avoidance of reading any potential spoilers. I do believe I liked the movie but its not a must see or a movie that I would buy. At the same time, I wouldn’t tell anyone to avoid watching it if they were intrigued by the previews. So my recommendation is go see if it you think you are interested so you know for your self what all the hype is about. You may just really like it.