Cloverfield Made Me Sick! Yeah, And A Lot Of Others Too!
I think most of us have seen Cloverfield by now, and it was a pretty wild ride. Landmarks getting blasted, ticks the size of suitcases bounding around, plenty of gunplay…everything you could want in a good action movie with a science fiction bent. But what a lot of us didn’t expect was the down side of Cloverfield, with its simulated hand-held camera work.
Should’ve Included Dramamine with the Jujubes
Motion sickness—that’s right, folks; turns out Cloverfield made a few people sick. The tossing of the camera and the abrupt up and down and back and forth and side to side motion of the camerawork made more than a few stomachs pitch and yaw. Thankfully, I was all right with it while watching—it wasn’t as bad as the earlier and oft-compared to The Blair Witch Project. That sucker shook my stomach up pretty good.
They Even Warned People!
You see that picture above? That comes from a theater who’d put that out. Now, just in case you can’t read the shot, here is the text as best I can figure it out:
“Please be aware that this film was shot to imitate hand held camera filming. Images may appear unstable, abrupt and shaky. If you are sensitive and prone to motion sickness, please prepare yourself.”
That should’ve been a pretty clear sign. If not to the people who put Cloverfield together, then at least to the people planning to watch it; this was going to make people sick.
And what will absolutely not spur your motion sickness is the Cloverfield trivia on Kwanzoo.
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It didn’t bother me in the least, and I’ve become somewhat of a bully to everyone who says it made them sick. I equated it to the people who claimed to get “stomachaches” from The Passion. Then I asked someone who got sick if she was ever carsick, and she said she could barely ride in a car. Mystery solved!
I’m so mean.
I got a little shaky watching it every so often–like that bit where the army shows up for the first time. But you’re hardly being mean…people who get carsick really should know up front they’re probably going to get sick watching Cloverfield. Still, I think it was a class move on the part of the theatre to put that warning sign out–you might not have known going in that it was going to “Simulate hand held camera work”.
I like those simulated rides at theme parks, so I guess I found the camera work a bit tame. At least the seats weren’t moving to add to the illusion.