I went in prepared for the shaky-cam and still sat up front. It wasn’t too annoying and added to the ‘realism’.
I didn’t like Marlena; she was kind of a cunt in how she treated Hud, both at the party and again after the parasite attack in ht subway tunnel. Yes, Hud was annoying, but I don’t think he deserved to be treated like that. I did feel bad about Marlena dying. They showed Jason getting hit by a falling steel vertical suport from the bridge. It happened literally so quickly that if you blinked at the right time you would miss it.
And a question:
Did anyone else notice that the monster’s roar sounded just like Godzilla?
[spoiler] I believe that something about the bites caused her belly to swell up and burst. Did you notice that when they entered the triage area that a man was being wheeled by with his entire midsection blasted out? The spiders’ bites alone wouldn’t have done that, but if there was some sort of toxin in their bite that caused swelling and bursting, then it makes sense that the same thing happened to Marlena.
What I don’t think happened was a bellyburster like the Alien chestburster. [/spoiler]
Marlena was kinda mean to Hud but he was a loudmouthed oaf, telling everyone at the party about Rob and Beth sleeping together even after Lily said not to tell anyone. Without really seeing what Hud looked like, I kept picturing Knocked Up’s Seth Rogan behind the camera. I think the actress who played Marlena, Lizzy Caplan, should be in a movie playing Zooey Deschanel’s sister. They’re practically twins.
[spoiler]I saw him but my take was that he had just been chewed to pieces. The fact that the ward was filled with recovering patients makes me think that they could have saved her but she was already bleeding out like a late stage Ebola victim.
Which doesn’t invalidate your view point. There’s a lot of stuff in the film open to interpretation which will make it a fun film for any nerd. I mean, do you think the splash at Coney Island at the end of the film was the monster? Yea or nay?[/spoiler]
Honestly I found all the major characters completely unlikable but that didn’t make a difference for the movie. They’re there to be victims not heroes.
I am prone to motion sickness. After all the shakey- am bashing, I was prepared to walk out if it got too bad. Don’t laugh, but I popped a Dramamine and went along for the ride. It was one of the best monster movies I’ve seen in a long time. Once the thing gets going, there’s hardly a letup. I was on the edge of my seat multiple times. It was a visceral experience on the level of “The Thing” or “Alien” in parts. Yep, that was one pretty cool movie. For my money, better than “The Mist” or “The Host”.
The illustration linked in post #77 gives you a good idea of what the big terrible thing looks like. I haven’t seen an online image of the smaller terrible things.
I saw it today and I came here as soon as I got online to see if anyone else saw that. Yes, that’s exactly what I thought as well.
For the record, I liked it. I didn’t go in with high expectations. I thought the shaky-cam might make me nauseous but I thought it was actually pretty steady for most of it, except when they were running when you’d expect it to be shaky.
I think it’s defintely open for a sequel, we could see another point of view maybe or the aftermath. Maybe get a couple answers.
Just got back. The shaky-cam made my boyfriend throw up. Seriously. He said there was a whole queue of people outside the theater recovering from various stages of nausea. He sat in the back for the rest of the film.
While I get terribly carsick in the back of taxis, I didn’t have a serious problem with the shaky-cam.
As for the film itself, I feel kind of meh. I like seeing my adopted city chomped to pieces as much as anyone, but there wasn’t quite enough of that and way too much talking from people I cared absolutely nothing about. I wanted the Monster’s story, even the army’s story. I did not want the crap-ass little story about a bunch of wealthy, whiny Manhattan douchebags. Just sayin.
And, to nitpick, that “Spring Street” 6-train station looks nothing like any subway station anywhere in Manhattan (though truth be told I can’t remember exactly what the spring street 6 station looks like). All the other sets were pretty authentic-looking, though I couldn’t really make sense of the view from the Columbus Circle tower at the beginning. It seemed like he should have been in the Trump Tower instead.
Big ups to Chris Mulkey as the only recognizable actor in the film! Anyone else catch him?
Was he one of the army guys? I thought one of the army guys looked familiar, one of those “hey, it’s that guy!” actors.
In my theater I did not see anyone leave during the film or hear any conspicuous vomiting noises. I think you’d have to be really sensitive to be bothered that much by it.
There were a couple funny comments in the film that got laughs out of everyone. I also liked how the guy holding the camera kept speculating as to what the creature was and he probably covered every possibility that everyone who has been speculating about the film have mentioned.
Yup. At least I’m 99% sure it was him. I am kind of a nerd about semi-obscure character actors (especially those I’ve gotten drunk with…).
Well, I didn’t either, but we were fairly close to the front, about 7-8 rows back. As for my SO, at least he made it to the bathroom! I wasn’t made sick by it, but I did have many woozy moments. Like my brain was saying “please just STOP for a SECOND and let me SEE what is going ON.”
The biggest laugh in my screening: After the helicopter crash, someone shouted out “…AND the camera still works!” to audience guffaws.
[spoiler]That monster was absolutely horrifying. I felt a sense of dread the first time we saw its head and heard it roar, just as the foursome was making its way down into the subway.
Marlena’s description was chilling: “It was eating everyone.”
I loved the ambiguous ending and that everyone ultimately died. Perfect.
There were certain situations that could have been handled terribly, but that were done very well. For instance, the scene in which the foursome stumbled upon the military infirmary, just after Marlena was bitten. I expected the military dudes to be extremely antagonistic. You know, all mum’s the word, very authoritative. “That’s classified! You’re on your own!” Instead we got a candid response from a soldier who didn’t know what the fuck was going on, and then he offered information on an evacuation site not far from where our protagonists were headed.
My only complaint is Hud. He offered some comic relief, but I think what really would have made the film is a near silent cameraman. One who is stricken with grief and dread just like his companions. It would have made for a very somber mood, but it would’ve brought the movie to an entirely different level on the terror scale.
I missed this splash in the ocean at Coney Island. Can someone describe this to me?[/spoiler]
I don’t know. Hud seemed like a Big Sack O’ Duh when he was introduced, but there’s also the possibility that he was pretty drunk by that time since he’d been at the party long before Jason got there. Maybe he was running around in a drunken haze for most of the film, which explains the half-assed rationalizations and the dogged determination to hang onto the camera.
At the very beginning when they were “queuing up the video” there was a one or two frame Dharma logo. It was tiny, in the lower right, but it was there. The symbol in their logo looked like a snake but it flashed by really fast.
It wasn’t anything big on screen. Just in the background of the ocean you can see a huge splash with no cause that I saw.
I enjoyed it. The shakeycam was kind of unpleasant, but I don’t think the film would have worked without it. I was willing to suspend disbelief for the most part regarding how the camera functioned in the circumstances and how dedicated the cameraman was to getting the shots. Anyway, I do have a few quibbles:
[spoiler]At the end of the film, Rob says that it’s been 7 hours since the monster first attacked. I think he mentions that it’s around 6:45 at that time. How can that possibly add up? So, the monster attacks between 11 and 12 during the party, and Beth gets injured almost immediately. They run around for an indeterminate amount of time, including traversing the subway tunnels. They get to Beth’s and it’s still quite dark, and the building is still miraculously standing (or rather, leaning) and Beth is still alive. They then quickly run to the helicopter and almost escape. It’s still dark. The helicopter crashes, and it’s light out. It looks like it’s been light out for awhile, too. Then they all die.
So, there’s about 5.5 hours that are unaccounted for. I suppose a few of those could have been spent running down the tunnels, but it seems utterly implausible to me that the building could still be standing in that condition and Beth wouldn’t have bled out. Other than that, where could the time have gone?
Also, did it really bug anyone else that the helicopter didn’t fly directly away from the monster? It seemed like that was the flight path most designed to get a satisfying shot of the monster, but least designed for survival.[/spoiler]
While I do think the hype has been a bit over the top, it’s definitely a competent popcorn movie - I liked it quite a bit, although I would’ve preferred for the monster to be even more alien and incomprehensible. The hand-held camera didn’t even register with me after the first 10-15 minutes.
Incidentally, here’s a couple of pics of yours truly with some hopefully recognizable props in the background
That merger was a bloodbath - and rumblings in the press hint that SKG may bail, after all, which would suck. Things are pretty quiet on the lot right now, what with the writer’s strike - Star Trek is shooting at full speed, though, as far as I can tell.
We had a pretty good year in 07. Wouldn’t hurt to start this one off with a bit o’ cash, either. If the budget for Cloverfiled was as low as mentioned, it sure won’t hurt.
[spoiler]I bought his determination to hang onto the camera for a couple reasons. Firstly, without that determination, there wouldn’t have a been a story. Second, you have to figure there were a lot of people running around having their own adventures during the movies. Some of them probably had cameras, but decided to put self-preservation over posterity. Out of all those people, probably one or so actually kept filming. Well, that’s the story we just happen to have.
Also, not everyone died. Lily probably got out okay on the helicopter. But yeah, everyone else died.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]I could understand Beth not bleeding out on the spot. On the other hand when they yank it out of her I wouldn’t give her more than twenty minutes.
There are a lot of cuts that can fill that time. In fact given the ammount of ground they cover I’m suspicious that they could fit it all in. They’re in lower Manhattan to start and at roughly 12:45 they make their way on foot to the Brooklyn Bridge. Then they get about a quarter mile across on foot with heavy crowds.
Then they run back in a panic to the island and decide to head north about four miles to Columbus circle. We don’t see all of the trip to the fight scene so there’s lost time there. Then they cower in the subway for a while and choose to walk through the tunnels which is plenty of opportunity for more cuts (as you noted). They rest for a while in the break room and then get mixed in with the military where there is a cut but its a safe guess that this is a fast one.
From there it’s walking the rest of the way to Columbus circle which we don’t see and then climbing up nearly sixty stories, then back down at least twenty (actually more but I’m not going to estimate how many extra stories they gained due to the angle of the building; it’s the hypotenuse of that triangle, after all). There’s tons of cuts in the climbing; we don’t see 1% of that. Rescued Beth and then back up those twenty stories (at a steep angle, too), back down the fifty-nine stories and to the evacuation site. When they get there it’s roughly 5:30am since it is still pitch dark and it’s early morning daylight at 6:45.
So somehow they traveled through miles of disaster filled streets, stumbled through a dark subway tunnel, scaled a sixty story building, managed a very difficult climb in an tilted building all in roughly four and half hours. It just doesn’t seem like enough time to me but they’re motivated.[/spoiler]
At least I’m 99% sure it was him. I am kind of a nerd about semi-obscure character actors (especially those I’ve gotten drunk with…).