In the vast genres and subgenres of horror movies that we are blessed, probably my favorite style of horror is found footage cinematography. I’m a sucker for it. Ever since I watched the original Blair Witch Project as a kid, I can’t get enough of the creativity and immersion that good found footage films provide. Perhaps at the top of most people’s found footage horror lists is a little 2008 movie called Cloverfield.
Cloverfield is about the night a giant monster attacks NYC as told from the perspective of a group of young adults and their video camera. While there is some debate as to the origin of the monster, most arguments center on alien or prehistoric monster, so I thought Cloverfield would be a good movie to close out Space Week and lead into Halloween Week. Whatever you believe about the movie’s antagonist, you cannot deny the movie’s ability to truly convey the terror it causes. Viewers are quickly thrown into the chaos of a large-scale attack and the desperation that our little group of survivors feel as they try to get out of New York. In the midst of monster attacks and military ops, the thing I appreciate most about Cloverfield is the human stories told within the plot. We see people lose those closest to them in the blink of an eye and watch them process their grief and trauma in real time, and this attachment to human consequences is what makes Cloverfield such an effective portrayal of disaster. The monster designs still hold up pretty well, and the scale of destruction really makes you feel the weight of the attack.
Cloverfield is such an interesting milestone in cinema to me. While it definitely did not reinvent the found footage wheel, I believe it utilizes the technique better than almost any movie I’ve seen. My roommate, media production expert Harry Fogle, commented to me that the movie occurred at a unique time in technology when it was old enough to utilize a camcorder perspective while being new enough to not be 4:3 ration, and while I could’ve never verbalized that myself, it definitely expounds upon the strange individuality that Cloverfield offers. It’s tense and sad, and by itself it is an excellent horror movie. However, its value is only magnified when one considers that it was followed with an in-universe sequel that ranks as one of the best horror films ever made, a movie that we will be visiting later this Halloween week. If you like found footage an have never seen Cloverfield, or if it has been a while since you have, it is definitely worth viewing as a juggernaut of the horror genre.
Halloween Week is finally here! This week is devoted to the few movies that have legitimately scared or disturbed me over the course of my quarter century life of horror films. We are starting it off strong tonight with John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of The Thing!
