Then I thought, “Even if she IS alive, she’s badly hurt–are they going to have to carry her all the way down the stairs and get her to the choppers?” But she seemed fine afterwards–a little too convenient as you said, but oh well. If I can accept the resilience of a camera that survives a helicopter crash, I can accept a girl running around after getting de-barred.
ETA: One more thing that actually did seem to break convention. I thought for sure Lily was going to die when she got into the other helicopter and was separated from Hud, Rob and Beth, like they were going to look at her chopper going up and then getting hit by a missile. But it was their helicopter that got taken down and Lily’s that (presumably) made it through.
[nitpick] Actually, there was a Richie Aprile, Jr. He appeared in one episode (“Knight in White Satin Armor”), and was portrayed by Andy Blankenbuehler. He’s best remembered as that fabulous ballroom dancing guy. [/nitpick]
I halfway expected her to die then and there. Screams and curses about how she’s bleeding out, her legs in the frame convulsing, then going limp. (I appear to have a grim streak.) Would’ve been pretty jarring… The rescue mission has failed, we’re reduced to pure survival.
One thing bugged me, though:
After the tunnel engagement, it should have been clear that there are small & dangerous creatures about - but they can be beaten off. Who wouldn’t make it the first order of business to get their hands on a crowbar or a fireman’s axe or something after that? Also, they could’ve foraged for better pair of shoes for whatshername - they walked through a mall, fercryinoutloud!
Speaking of the “mall,” I’m assuming that that was supposed to be Bloomingdale’s since there’s nothing else similar in that area. It’s close to the six train (and they were at 59th). Except there’s no way that I’m aware of, of entering Bloomie’s through the subway and I’m really familiar with that subway…do I need to go back and take a closer look?
In any event, they did get found by the military before they had time to look for shoes. And I’m assuming that after they got found, they were under pressure from the time constraints–making it back before the choppers left.
It’s not related to World War Z, but George Romero’s upcoming film Diary of the Dead uses pretty much the same conceit. A group of film students get caught in a zombie outbreak in western PA. It does feature footage from other sources (security cameras, newsfeeds, etc) spliced in.
I feel a little dumb for saying this, but I was confused as to whether there was one big monster or two. When they first showed the monster, it was a mess of huge tentacles. It smashes the bridge (and Jason) with them. In the electronics store, when they were watching the news, the news helicopter camera showed something that looked basically like a huge octopus lying in the middle of the city. It was not standing, and it would wrap its tentacles around buildings.
But then later in the movie, after they rescue Beth, they show it walking around on legs. They show it step on the tank on the other side of the bridge. Then, of course, there’s Hud’s final shot of the creature, which shows it standing above him.
So I can’t figure out if I was just blind and I missed both the legs at the start and the tentacles at the end, or whether there were two monsters, or if I’m supposed to think it adapted to land and sprouted legs or something.
The monster looked like different every time they showed it. When it wrecked the bridge it used tentacles. On the newscast in the electronics store, the legs ended in what lloked like horses’ hooves. Another time the feet looked like crab or spider feet. When it took down the chopper, it had what looked like fingers on it’s front feet…
I liked to inconsistency. It calls to mind how different people would give you different accounts of the monster.
I noticed that, too…I felt a little stupid, too. Like, “Wait, why does it look so different–did I remember it wrong?” But I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only one who saw the movie and still isn’t quite sure what the monster looked like.
First of all I really enjoyed the film and am glad it held to the primary conceit that this was found footage. It was a truly visceral experience.
A couple of nitpicks: I’ve read all the posts before mine and am surprised that the dopers seem more incredulous of the camera surviving the helicopter crash than the people - it looked like they fell a tremendous distance.
The camera’s seemingly unending battery life has been brought up but the tape was less than 90 minutes long. That seems like a reasonable amount of juice.
Add me to the list of people thinking Beth should’ve bled out after they lifted her off the rebar.
Do we ever find out what the monster is exactly, or where it came from, or is part of the wonderousness of the movie that you never know exactly what it is? I saw it and once the credits started rolling everone kind of looked around at each other and said, “That’s it? What the hell was that thing? Why didn’t we ever find out what it was?”
I didn’t even notice that the movie didn’t take place in realtime until this thread. It seems like it does even though it takes place over 7 hours. I liked how they mentioned where the camera was recovered. You knew that they wouldn’t make it out of Manhatten. About the helicopter crash; I’m not a pilot, but wouldn’t the pilot want to get as much altitude as possible instead of flying at skyscraper level? Hud and Morella were drunk, weren’t they? They should put some more news coverage on the DVD as a special feature.
The timer was in the corner of the frame and you’d often notice it jumping ahead in chunks at cuts. Sometimes the cuts were written into the action sequence, and other times they sort of ignored it. The most obvious was in the climb up the stairwell when they reached the sexy g/f’s building. The timer would jump ahead in very subtle cuts, you could sort of see the camera angle shifting, but since it was essentially the same repetitive sequence of stairs you might not notice it with all the shakycam business to distract you. There were additional cuts going to and from the Brooklyn bridge as well as in the trip to the copter lift site.
I’m curious how it would have played if they’d have addressed it during the script. Perhaps having Hud, during the stair climb and other uneventful transit portions turning it off while commenting about wanting to “save some juice” or mentioning how he’s is going to stow it to make the stair climb. Could have mitigated some of the suspension of disbelief comments people have made and also added to the found footage element by fragmenting the action a little more. It could have come across as annoying, and perhaps they scrapped the concept when they got to the editing room, but I think that would have been my direction in his shoes.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I LOVE this about the movie, because you wouldn’t get any explanations in real life, either. (You know, should a giant monster crash into NY in real life ) No “monster is upset about nuclear proliferation” or “monster needs a new homeworld because its planet is dying” explanations. Just random carnage and trying to survive. The not knowing makes it more terrifying, IMO
For sure…and it felt more real. Movies like “Godzilla” or “Jurassic Park” aren’t as frightening, IMHO, because there’s the whole omniscient narrator thing. We know the overall message, the why, the how, the morality. This feels like what would happen in real life if a monster hit. The uncertainty, the “is it really terrorists”? And there definitely would be people asking “How?!” like Hud was in the subway, but really it would make no difference.
The bridge attack was from its tail, which was rather long and had long “fins” running along the top and bottom (you see these in the attack sequences during the run for the 'copter after rescuing Beth).
The beast also had two large forelimbs - very long and gangly, and bent at odd places. The “fingers” (two of them, also long, with maybe a small thumb also present, which we see when it seemingly bites the big one after it got bombed) were also bent under when it walked; it walked on its knuckles (you can also see this when it stomped on the tank during the “get to da choppah!” sequence…the “foot” was pointing opposite the direction the creature was moving).
There were no tentacles that I recall seeing. I think the initial flailing about of long, gangly forelimbs and tail, with the bulk of the monster hidden by buildings, may have given the impression of tentacles, though.
We never got a good look at its hind legs, but it also had at least two, maybe four, other appendages on its body. These we see in at least two different scenes: the first major reveal once the 'copter was airborne, and again when it and Hud had their little meeting.
My question is…if this thing was alive why didn’t things like missiles and tank fire hurt it? I mean, really…no matter HOW big it was, if it could actually move in earth gravity it couldn’t shrug off a couple of silver bullets or a maverick…let alone the big stuff (1000+ lb laser guided bombs and the like…let alone the FAE bomb I assume they dropped at the end there).
) No “monster is upset about nuclear proliferation” or “monster needs a new homeworld because its planet is dying” explanations. Just random carnage and trying to survive. The not knowing makes it more terrifying, IMO