Cloverfield (2008)★★★★☆

Tomorrow is my brother’s birthday and I wanted to watch his favorite horror movie in honor of that…but tomorrow is a Thursday and his favorite horror movie is not at least twenty years old. So I watched his favorite horror movie today instead, and I’m considering actually heading to the theater on Friday to watch the recently released sequel.

I’m happy to say my brother’s taste in movies isn’t bad (or at least it’s compatible with my taste in movies). I’ve seen this movie a few times before, and I always like it. Even knowing what’s going to happen, I find myself holding my breath during some of the more intense scenes, of which there are many.

I’ll admit that the shaky camera work was a bit dizzying at times, but overall the found footage style works well for this movie. I genuinely liked the cut scenes from a month earlier – it seemed plausible to me that they’d be recording over some previous recording (it’s not a completely digital camcorder, right?), and the character development that happens through those scenes is useful and compelling.

Most of the really horrible stuff happens off-camera or is obscured from view, which I find much more terrifying. Even the best special effects can’t live up to the horrors I can create in my own head. The cast is awesome – everyone is believable and the group chemistry works really well. The movie is claustrophobic at times, but you feel like you’ve gotten to know the group so well by that point that it’s somehow okay.

I’m a little worried about 10 Cloverfield Lane, but John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are both awesome, so it can’t be all that bad, right?