Motion (Picture) Sickness

I’ve never gotten motion sickness before. Roller coasters, airplanes, boats, road trips . . . I love all of them. My mom can’t read in the car and will only ride 1 ride at Six Flags. My brother and his wife got motion sickness when we were driving out to Point Reyes and I was like, “What is their deal?”

Until last night. We watched Cloverfield and it was the most miserable movie going experience of my life. The movie was good! But I kept having to close my eyes and remember where I was and that I was not moving. We passed the Burt’s Bees back and forth between us because smelling the mint was stabilizing. I had to get up and go walk around in the lobby and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go back in.

But I did. I wanted to see what happened and it’s a testament to the brilliance of J. J. Abrams (who also sucked me into Lost) that I went back in to watch a movie about a monster. If there’s one thing that I will never find scary in movies it is a monster.

Scary things: the unknown (ghosts, strange noises, weird happenings) and sociopaths (a la Javier Bardem’s character in No Country for Old Men).

But MONSTERS? Give me a break. I thought Signs was the scariest movie ever right up until they showed the giant alien and then I was like, “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Puh-lease.” Then it was just silly. I felt the same way with both I Am Legend and Cloverfield. Weird vampiric creatures and giant spider things and a big monster?

Okay. I’ll humor you. But scared? Nope.

I’ve gotten the same reaction from people when I told them that the Blair Witch Project freaked me the hell out. I watched it in the theater (without getting motion sickness, I might add) and for days I had a movie hangover. That movie was scary because it IS the unknown: you don’t know what you’re fighting, you don’t know the rules and there’s the vulnerability of being in the wide open outdoors with no one around. And I camped so much in my childhood that that movie sort of raped my happy camping memories. Camping wasn’t something I ever viewed as scary.

But never ever will I be walking down the street in New York and fear that a giant monster will come and tear down the buildings and eat people.

My lack of fear aside, the way the movie was filmed was awesome. Even though it made me sick (rent it, y’all, watch it on a small screen, like an iPhone screen) it was successful to me precisely because it wasn’t slick and polished. The fact that it looked like any old Joe could have filmed it, that the lighting and angles were realistic (read: poor), like it was a YouTube video made it slightly more believable. And in a movie about monsters (monsters, for crying out loud!), that’s totally what it needed.