Genre Guesstimation – Cloverfield (2008)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

Next month’s Genre has been chosen by Tim of FilmFunkel  We will be reviewing our favorite Found Footage movies.  In order to get a better idea as to what this genre might include, check out this post by Tim.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of December by sending them to TisTheFFSeason@movierob.net  Try to think out of the box!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Found Footage Films…

“Okay, just to be clear here, our options are: die here, die in the tunnels, or die in the streets. That pretty much it?” – Hud

Number of Times Seen – 1 (14 Dec 2015)

Brief Synopsis – A group of friends try to get out of New York when a monster shows up and wreaks havoc all over the city.

My Take on it – As you all know, I’m not the biggest fan of horror or Monster type movies, but this one was done quite cleverly.

It focuses solely on the few characters we get to know and we only learn what they know which helps with the feeling of not really understanding everything that is happening, just like them.

From my research, I have found out that there was much hype before this film came out trying to get people very curious about the plot and that even the original teaser trailer didn’t even have a movie title attached to it.

I wonder if that would have made this movie even better for me if I had seen all of the promos and hype from back then.

As a found footage film, this one was done quite well and (although not having seen enough of them), I think I can honestly say that it should be placed among the upper echelon of them because it is very clever in it’s camera movements and storytelling.

Unfortunately, it still is missing something that would have made it great in my eyes instead of just very good.

Bottom Line – I actually liked the way this movie was done. Having waited so long to see it, I missed out on all the hype, but I’m not sure that really affects my thoughts very much. Liked the way that we only know what the characters find out and that many things are left up for the imagination. Seems to fit well into the genre and is perhaps in the upper echelon of movies made this way, but still felt it was lacking something to make it a great movie. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – The running time of the film, without credits, is about 80 minutes, the length of a long-running MiniDV tape, a common format used in consumer camcorders. (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Close, but once again, I liked the movie but the found footage aspect is slightly disturbing to watch and takes away from the enjoyment a bit.

Rating – Globe Worthy

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