Why is this good?


Why is the rating so high at imdb?

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To hazard a guess I would say that people like it and scored it highly.

I'm no expert but could be the defining factor.

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The film wasn’t that good even for imdb standards. I like many films that others hate. But I don’t understand how this film was as good as a 7 to so many people.

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The movie was rated highly because it successfully played on people's emotions after 9/11. I would've rated it an 8 when it first came out for that very reason.

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It came out the better part of a decade after 9/11. That had nothing to do with it.

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Spoken like a typical foreign national on Movie Chat. The film came out only seven years after 9/11, so WTF are you even talking about (the better part of a decade)? This "better part of a decade" crap is typical bull**** from someone trying very hard to sound like an authority about an event they know nothing about.

You're not only a foreigner who has no idea how deeply relevant 9/11 still was in 2008, you're obviously a kid, too. Kids have problems grasping cultural history; it's why you'd be dumb enough to argue that the movie came out so long after 9/11 that there couldn't have been a connection there. You weren't there, in other words, so you can only intellectualize.

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🤣 literally everything you said was incorrect.

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GOOD MOVIE...VERY REWATCHABLE...7 OR 8 OUT OF 10 EASY.

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😎

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I think usually when a movie does that well in ratings it is because not many people say it that would not automatically be fans of it. So they rate it highly, and there are just not as many people who saw it who can be objective about it, or who bothered to rate it. It's a substandard movie in every way.

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7/10 is pretty accurate. Which is shocking for IMDb. This movie is good and was hugely popular in it's time.

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I just saw this film for the first time and honestly I don't know what to think of it, half of me thought it was good and the other half thought it was garbage.

It's hard for me to judge movies like this, constant action in a film can get a little tiresome, and this is only my 2nd found footage movie, Blair Witch was the other. I think I liked BW more. But I would imagine this was a great film to watch in a theater.

Action films are not really my favorite though, so I'm probably bias, I'll give it a 5 out of 10.

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I saw this at a theater & there was lots & lots of screaming from teen girls & jumping a lot from any sound around. Yea it was intense.

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Seems like it would be a pretty good theater film but I actually watched Colossal (2017) shortly after this and liked it more. Of course, they're totally different movies but they both feature a large creature.

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The first half of you was correct. It's a good movie. It's well-made and imaginative.

The filmmakers basically said, "Let's make a serious movie told from the first-person perspective of someone who was in a city when it was attacked by a giant kaiju." It's actually a pretty interesting premise that was well-executed, in my opinion.

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Cloverfield is not too bad, I just think it's a little too heavy on the action scenes. I liked Colossal more... it's pretty damn funny.

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I just watched this movie today for the first time, and WOW, it was awesome. I don't like horror, I love sci fi movies, so I think I liked it because of the science fiction. I've read this is one of 2000s most underrated movies, I agree.

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It's the best found-footage movie ever made, "The Blair Witch Project" being the second. It also contains the only good music Michael Giacchino ever composed, so there's that.

It finally gave America the ONE good kaiju movie ever made in this country. After endless failures before and after this film came out, this is still the only good Japanese-style monster movie ever made in the United States.

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I actually would put it ahead of Blair Witch. Blair Witch was fun in a gimmicky way, but once you've seen it you've seen it. There's no replay value. Cloverfield on the other hand is still fun the second time around.

As for it being "the ONE good kaiju movie ever made in this country," well, I liked Pacific Rim. (The first one at least. The sequel was garbage.)

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Oof! Sometimes I can't type. Yeah, "Cloverfield" is Number One, "The Blair Witch Project" is Number Two. I've done the edit.

"Pacific Rim" was good. I kind of forget about that one, since I remember it more as a giant robot movie. But, the kaiju were quite good.

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Cool. I would probably have to say that Cloverfield is the best found footage movie I've seen. The only one that potentially rivals it, for me, is not Blair Witch but Chronicle.

Now that I think about it, is it just me, or does the found footage genre seem to be dead? Seems like it's been years since I saw a new one.

As for Pacific Rim, remember, the giant robots were only built because the kaiju started attacking!

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"Cloverfield" succeeded, in part, because they shot it with an actual cine camera, a Sony F3, which had a 35mm-size sensor. So, they had a cinema-quality image to start with, then they worked on it in post production to make it look more like a camcorder.

It's beautifully paced, and knows when to hold the camera relatively steady so we can clearly see the "money shots" of the monster and the destruction. It was the best film writer Drew Goddard and director Matthew Reeves ever made. And, to me, it is the only good film that J.J. Abrams was involved in, being the producer and the one who made the film happen.

Found-Footage Movies are DEFINITELY more miss than hit. I think it became clear that the best ones had been made and what came out after just weren't going to match up.

I got you about "Pacific Rim"! Guillermo del Toro making it makes a big difference since his enthusiasm is certainly evident.

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I do recall reading that about the camera. I'm sure that helped. Out of curiosity I looked to see how much that camera goes for now. Looks like you can pick one up off eBay for right around a thousand bucks.

You may be right about Goddard and Matt Reeves, though I have enjoyed other projects they've been involved in, like Let Me In and The Batman for Reeves, and Cabin in the Woods, World War Z and The Martian for Goddard.

As for JJ, come now, isn't that being a little harsh? The "only" good film that he's ever been involved with? Just looking at his director credits, I enjoyed Super 8 and Mission: Impossible III. And he was also a producer on M:I Fallout, which is one of the best action films of the current era. Strangely, he also write the script for Regarding Henry. That's odd to me, but there it is.

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Yeah, there are just directors who don't "do it" for me. Sam Mendes is another one. I am just not on their wavelength, whatever that is. To me, Abrams takes stuff he grew up with, like "Star Wars" and recycles it. I don't see that much originality in him. But, "Cloverfield" comes up with an entirely original melding of found footage, kaiju and channeling the horrors of 9/11 in a truly frightening way. So, I'm glad that he got the project made. Even if I liked other projects he did, I would still very likely place "Cloverfield" at the top of the projects in which he was involved.

When it comes to the "M:I" films, I think the Christopher McQuarrie films have been the best. I now see that Abrams produced those. Again, I think he backs some great movies and helps get them made. But, he isn't the creative on those projects. I actually liked "Mission: Impossible II" which was completely nuts! But, I am a sucker for John Woo films, so...

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Cloverfield is great, but I certainly don't think it's the only great American kaiju film ever made. The 2014 Godzilla is, in my opinion, the best kaiju film ever made anywhere. The original Godzilla film is also excellent, but it suffers from inconsistencies that were part and parcel of its era. There are several other great American kaiju films, and if we're being honest, most of the Japanese kaiju films are fun movies, great for kids, and can be entertaining to an adult, but are by no stretch great films.

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The 2014 one just didn't do much for me outside the occasional Godzilla sequences. I just did not care at all about the characters. And then, they just skip over the cool stuff like our bad boy destroying Vegas. Then, the climatic battle happens mostly in the dark. Yes, Emmerich and Devlin's version was fun, even though it had nerdy Matthew Broderick at its center. I personally didn't care if he got squashed or not. So, that is a big thing for me: Human characters I care about. "Cloverfield" got that right, the other two we're talking about had minor (1998) to major (2014) problems in that area for me.

But hey, if you liked those movies, that's good.

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YOU KNOW...LIKE...QUALITY AND STUFF. NOEMOJI

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