"I felt like my eyes were raped."

So, Cloverfield then. I went to see it yesterday because a) the premise sounded interesting; b) it seemed like one of those films you really had to see at a cinema and c) you haven't been able to go near an Interweb in the last 6 months without someone saying something/stumbling across some viral ARG-ish ad campaign.

I have to say that I thought it was awesome. I'm a sucker for films that try something new, and just the whole 'everything was shot on a personal camcorder by 'amatuers' thus breaking the whole Fourth Wall' thing definitely ticks that box so enthusiastically that it tears a hole in the paper.

It throws up some interesting production techniques that hopefully someone will delve more into in the future. The tape occasionally 'skips' to the old film it's taping over, essentially a love story between a couple of the characters. If someone could somehow implement this as a 'proper' way of doing flashback sequences (or, I guess, flashforwards) then I think the results could be interesting.

Also, there's a quote from Matt Reeves, the director, which I thought was mind-blowingly clever. Possible spoilers follow, so tread lightly! This is what he said:

"There's a moment on the Brooklyn Bridge, and there was a guy filming something on the side of the bridge, and Hud sees him filming and he turns over and he sees the ship that's been capsized and sees the headless Statue of Liberty, and then he turns back and this guy's briefly filming him. In my mind that was two movies intersecting for a brief moment, and I thought there was something interesting in the idea that this incident happened and there are so many different points of view, and there are several different movies at least happening that evening and we just saw one piece of another."

That's just an awesome idea. I don't know how else to put it, but that would be a stunning way for someone to do a film series, or maybe even a sort of Groundhog Day inspired TV series (repeating the same day from different viewpoints).

It's just a stunningly well made movie altogether. The special effects are really top class. The monster's design was absolutely brilliant, looking like several different 'things' throughout the run-time in order to keep you guessing. (So, for example, I thought it was a dinosaur at one point, a giant squid a little later etc.) Although I have to say that the little spider things it drops every now and again seemed like a bit of a rip off of the poisonous headcrabs from Half-Life 2.

The characters were pretty good, if a little one-dimensional sometimes, and it was cleverly written. I'm not saying it's the best script in the world but it holds up well enough. The product placement did my head in a little bit though: Nokia is everywhere, as is Mountain Dew.

And of course the marketing. It really has set a new bar for viral advertising using the Internet, which I'll probably go into more in the future. I'll just leave it there for now ;-)

Wondering what happened to Jimmy?

Jimmy thought that he'd broken his leg,
(Bones brittle, like the shell of an egg),
But then he stood up -
An ant in a cup,
And was rescued by Simon Pegg.