Tag Archives: Blair Witch Project

Cloverfield – Review

So I’ve mentioned this movie a few times before, mostly back in the summer of 2007 when I saw the unnamed 1-18-08 preview. I think I was pretty accurate in my original description when I originally referred to it as “Godzilla meets the Blair Witch Project“, that’s exactly what it was (except the creature wasn’t Godzilla). Lots of action, really awesome special effects. The jiggly camera action bothered some people, I was okay with it but I certainly understand why it’d be annoying…

Cloverfield Matt ReevesThe plot needed a faster start at the beginning, they spent forever setting everything up. I thought the slow start was really odd since I thought the preview did a great job of setting everything up in about 30 seconds (rob,. party, going away, friends, explosion, monster, run) so I’m not sure why it took so long to set up in the film. I’ve got comments on the end too, but don’t worry I wont talk about those. I really enjoyed it, it’s pretty much what I expected (but with better effects) so I was happy.

What I didn’t like was a few technical details: I thought at the beginning they specifically mentioned the video was specifically found on an SD chip, but throughout the movie it’s a “tape” and treated that way too, so I’m not sure why they bothered to set that up. And they didn’t seem to bother worrying about the camera battery as a plot problem, which I would have been okay with, except they did worry about they cell phone battery as a plot problem (and they way they handled it could have let them fix it as a camera problem too). Continue reading

Godzilla meets Blair Witch Project ?!?

So I just got back from the movies and what’s more important than a movie review?!? A movie preview review! What’s the title of this movie? I don’t know. They didn’t list a title just that it was produced by J. J. Abrams. Plus they didn’t give it away as to what the movie is actually about, very strange…

So the trailer is a home movie of a party and after they establish the characters (and that it’s a going-away party) you hear a rumble and a noise outside. They then go up to the roof and hear the same noises and see an explosion in the distance. Then the camera angles get all Blair-Witch-like as they run around and there are a few more explosions (and screaming).

Then you just see J. J. Abrams name and the date of the release, 01.18.08, and that’s it. Very strange. Looks very cool.

I thought it was a Godzilla flick but the rumors on-line don’t think so (but that was their first impression too). But I’m still hoping…

UPDATE:
Plus they’ve updated the site at 1-18-08.com which now has a second photo and they are a flash image now that randomly layers them (instead of the single jpeg that was there before) and I imagine they’ll slowly add more (fyi, all the images are date-stamped 1-18-08).

They’ve been pulling down the trailers pretty fast but here’s a copy that was live on YouTube
It should give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

Please note I’ve put some additional information up on July 7th.