1. The Cloverfield Monster - Cloverfield
Released in 2008,
Cloverfield is a found footage film about five New Yorkers who try to escape the city and save their friend, as a mysterious monster destroys it. This film is one of my all time favorites for a few reasons. Firstly, it reveals exposition in an interesting way through the use of the genre. Sometimes, we see the original contents of the tape, which the Hud, the cameraman, records over. It's a really clever way to convey some of the background information we need to know to understand the characters. Also, in the last of these sequences, an asteroid can be seen crashing in the background. Could it be the monster, maybe? Secondly, the first person point of view we have of Hud gives us an unsettling sense of realism. We're not watching a movie, per say. We're watching the raw footage and account of a victim, much the way a lot of 9/11 footage was. For this reason, the film feels more intimate, more personal, almost feels real.