Cloverfield

First things first: if you're the least bit prone to motion sickness, you should take your favorite motion sickness remedy before going to see this movie, or else you WILL get urpy and nauseous.

I meant to take Bomine before we went on Saturday. That stuff got me through even the storm-tossiest nights of my honeymoon cruise with nary a tummy flip-flop. But it only works if you remember to take it, which I didn't, so about a minute into the movie, I realized that I was screwed. I spent the rest of the movie with my head bowed and my hand over my eyes, looking up every few seconds to make sure I wasn't missing any cool parts, and forcing myself to keep looking during said cool parts.

So I think I saw all of the important stuff. I at least saw (and heard) enough to say confidently that, physical misery aside, I enjoyed this movie. I thought it was well done. I didn't feel like it was too gimmicky (although I do think that they could have given us a narrator who knew something about how to hold a camera still for two seconds), and it had what all of my favorite horror movies have: a slow build that allows you to get familiar with the characters and their surroundings and develop a sense of comfort and confidence before getting whapped upside the head with the realization that SOMETHING'S NOT RIGHT, followed by relentless action, tension and danger that never lets up for the rest of the movie.

THIS is what a post-modern Godzilla movie SHOULD be, Roland Emmerich: a balls-out disaster movie where you genuinely fear for the lives of your protagonists, NOBODY knows where this thing came from or what the hell is happening, even the military is so taken by surprise that they're disoriented and scared poopless, and you have the sinking feeling that the only hope the rest of the world has is to nuke the dadgum thing to kingdom come, and God help anybody who's left in the way when that happens. It's a feeling of inevitable doom so intense that you know any kind of happy ending would feel like a rip-off, and that makes any of the quiet, caring, sometimes even laughter-filled moments between the characters all the more tragic and poignant. They know they're screwed, YOU know they're screwed, and you know THEY know they're screwed, but they keep moving, keep trying to survive as long as they can. Giving up is not an option, no matter how hopeless it appears to be. And that's the sort of thing J.J. Abrams excels at. It's why I keep coming back to LOST no matter how many times it makes me feel screwed over. Because giving up is not an option. I'm on this crazy ride all the way to the bitter end.

Also: Good on you, Drew Goddard. I'm sure this is just the beginning of your movie writing career.