Month of Halloween - horror film #1: CLOVERFIELD (Matt Reeves, USA, 2008)

Today is two things; My birthday (not something you look forward to once you're old enough to have friends half your age!!) and the first day of October, i.e. Halloween month! I went to celebrate the day at my dad's place, I was in a hurry and forgot to bring a film, but on the way out of my flat I emptied my mailbox and there was ONE parcel for me; a DVD I'd bought second-hand from Amazon UK for the whooping price of 30 shiny pennies!!! And the copy I received looks brand new. Niice!

I didn't know anything about the film other than it was a kinda post-apocalypse film - or some such (yes-yes, I know it's a well known big-ass film and everybody else has seen it four years ago - but remember: It may be 2012 out here but in my house it's still 1985!!). The story line; A group of friends are having a going away party for one of their friends who's moving to Japan. One of them is given a camera to document the night so that the poor sod who's going to Japan has something to remember his friends by.

The whole party segment of the film goes on forever and you kinda forget you're watching a horror film but, uh, I guess it's what's called characterisation - with today's bombardment of films that include expensive CGI effects and HOLLOW story lines and ZERO time spent on getting to know the characters' background you kinda get totally alienated to the whole concept of CHARACTERISATION! I'm not even kidding (very much).

Anyhoo, at some point New York is suddenly attacked by something. I must admit it looked familiar to something we've seen on TV ... but this is a piece of fiction and it's got no roots in the real past. I'm not gonna reveal what happens cos that would be too much of a spoiler ... arrh what the hell, we're talking creature feature here! Not Godzilla, not big ants, not a blob, but, well, something else!

Before watching the film I had a feeling it might turn out to be a kinda okay'ish film but actually now that I've actually watched it I think it was really good. Not the best film I've ever seen, and I wouldn't give it five stars out of five as Søren Hardy Rasmussen did in his Uncut.dk review, but I was pretty good entertained! I think I'm more inclined to agree with Caspar Vang ("DVD check" next to the review on the same page) who gave it three stars and called it "pretty entertaining without breaking any new ground or being inventive").

The UK DVD has a commentary track and some onscreen production info. That's it! Not even a fucken trailer! But the print is great and there are English and Scandinavian subs. And at 30 pence I can hardly complain.
Recommended.