I saw Cloverfield today, the new J.J. Abrams movie, about a monster attacking New York (what an original idea!). All in all, it was a pretty standard giant monster movie, though it was also very similar to The Blaire Witch Project, because the whole thing was made to look like it was filmed by one of the characters in the movie (Hud), using a hand-held camcorder. There are no establishing shots and basically nothing that couldn’t be filmed by hand (no crazy panning, pretty much no completely stable & sharp shots, except for the beginning at the party).
About the blurry, shaking camera work. I get it, it was filmed by a panicking clumsy guy with a hand-held camera, but still. I had a headache by the end of the movie, because it was so hard to tell what was going on. I’m sure the attempt to make it look messy left the production company with a very low special effects budget, since there are only two or three clear shots of the monster for the entire film. The mini-monsters get a lot more screen time, and they look somewhat like giant spiders with fangs and maybe more legs. They move very fast, so it was hard to get a good look at them.
Meanwhile, the big monster is seemingly indestructible, and is still up and moving after being repeatedly bombed. It is a very well-made monster, plenty able to realistically pull down skyscrapers and such.
It was an ok movie, not something I’d see again, but I’d say it was worth my $8.50 to see what the monster looked like…