Best Buy has a “exclusive” DVD extra, a 24-minute “diary” by TJ Miller. Not all that exciting, but fun at the end – he walks off with his special effects half-body double, complaining about the lack of suitable roles for the duo.
If it’s a lungless sea-creature, how come it’s able to survive out of the water? We have real live giant sea creatures that if you throw them up on land die in short order. You know, whale sharks and giant squid both of which have gills. Not all sea creatures have gills, but those who don’t have lungs.
But we’re watching it from the point of view of the party kids on camera - we know only what they know, see only what they see and it seems feasible to me that if I were in a big city being attacked by a monster, I would only know there WAS a monster not where it came from, etc.
Of course, I would PREFER to know everything, but I like the braveness of the movie for not telling, for not having “that scientist scene.” I don’t need to be spoonfed every detail, it’s kinda fun to speculate (alien? mutant? ancient baby sea monster?).
I think the movie was a spot-on commentary of our “video everything” culture - it reminded me of the original Dawn of the Dead’s view of our love of malls and commercialism. Cloverfield was a great social commentary on youtube and flicker and the fact that we are a culture filled with people that generally have some sort of recording device in their pockets at all time.
I saw it last night on a big screen TV and had no issues with the shakycam at all (and it really bugged me during the Bourne movie).
Best exemplified by the scene immediately after the Statue of Liberty’s head landing in the street, where 20 people crowd around it, taking pictures and video with their phones, rather ignorant to the danger still lurking in the city.