"... guests viewing this film may experience side effects ..."

January 23, 2008 7:22 AM

Wang Chung. Pokemon. And now, Cloverfield.
posted by jbickers (32 comments total)

Flagged as viral.
posted by DU at 7:31 AM on January 23, 2008

Wasn't the Blair Witch movie tagged with motion sickness, too?
posted by davidmsc at 7:45 AM on January 23, 2008

I get nausea just reading the reviews. Does that count?
posted by butterstick at 7:48 AM on January 23, 2008

I certainly was really queasy watching this, and I rarely get motion sick. I had to take some pain killers and lie down a little after getting home.
posted by piratebowling at 7:49 AM on January 23, 2008

Oh, also, no piece of journalism should be allowed to use the phrase "According to wikipedia.com..." Please. Just stop.
posted by piratebowling at 7:51 AM on January 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

piratebowling

Especially since what they pulled off of Wikipedia was just a synopsis of the movie. Would it have killed them to give the reporter $7.50 to go see the movie for themselves?
posted by bookwo3107 at 8:02 AM on January 23, 2008

My mother had to walk out of the Blair Witch Project from the motion sickness, and its what's keeping my sister from seeing Cloverfield. I also have a friend who quit playing video games as a teen after getting sick playing Doom.

These are hard times we live in.
posted by Bookhouse at 8:15 AM on January 23, 2008

I have no desire or plans to see Cloverfield but my daughter, 14 years old, saw it this past weekend and announced that "it was the best movie I ever saw." I told her it was perhaps the best movie she had ever seen. She did not feel nausea. I did from listening to her recounting the plot.
posted by Postroad at 8:38 AM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

I didn't get motion sick from Cloverfield, but several scenes certainly set my vertigo off. The same thing has happened to me playing FPS games with aerial scenes.

I consider this to be a sign of good game design/sfx, however.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:39 AM on January 23, 2008

What, no mention of IMAX?
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 8:55 AM on January 23, 2008

Someone a few rows behind me actually vomited during Blair Witch. Added to the horror, I thought.
posted by katillathehun at 8:58 AM on January 23, 2008

Ocean's Twelve and United Flight 93 both made my wife puke in the parking lot afterward. We didn't even get to finish Flight 93.
posted by prototype_octavius at 9:01 AM on January 23, 2008

I definitely got a lump in my throat and felt a little dizzy watching Cloverfield. There were very few breaks where the camera wasn't moving so I'm not surprised people have had trouble with it. Also, I spent most of the movie looking all around the edges of the screen looking for any sign of the monster so that probably didn't help.

I watched a bootleg copy of the banned Pokemon episode and didn't understand why the Pikachu scene was supposed to be so intense. Could have had to do with the quality of the dub or that I wasn't watching it as intensely as a Japanese school kid.
posted by Hugonaut at 9:37 AM on January 23, 2008

I felt queasy during the one Pokemon episode I watched, but I don't think it was flashing lights that did it.
posted by goatdog at 10:04 AM on January 23, 2008

Man, I watched twenty seconds of a clip on Saturday and felt off the whole day. Something is definitely up.
posted by docpops at 10:10 AM on January 23, 2008

I can't watch the Pokemon videos because that fucker Brock never opens his goddamn eyes. I think, "would he even open his eyes if he got a Squirtle enema, you know like, 'wow' or 'oh my' or something?" and before you know it there's a wonderland of extremely unpleasant and borderline illegal subplots scampering around in my head and I need to go watch something safe like Labyrinth.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:13 AM on January 23, 2008

I'm one of those people who is susceptible to motion sickness playing certain first-person shooters and lately, the hand-held technique used in many new movies. I don't mind a subtle approach as it can lend itself to some very realistic scenes, but I almost had to walk out of The Bourne Ultimatum after the first ten minutes of what I considered to be over-the-top pans, zooms and shakes.
posted by itchylick at 10:15 AM on January 23, 2008

What's up is a slow, slow news day and lotsa good ol' fashioned American hype.
Every school cafeteria from suburb to shining suburb is buzzing about this, I bet.
(Remember "The Tingler"?)
I would love to be 14 again!
posted by Dizzy at 10:17 AM on January 23, 2008

That is maybe the dumbest article I have ever read. Has some solid testimonials, too:

"I heard a few people kind of whining about it."
"Take Dramamine, and you'll be fine."
"I mean, I'm so hot right now, I'm about to pass out."
posted by ORthey at 10:48 AM on January 23, 2008

My boyfriend had to leave the theatre three times. However, I get motion sickness after an hour and a half in a car (but not FPS games), and I was fine. The only time I felt like puking was completely unrelated to the movement of the camera and everything to do with the awesomeness.
posted by saturnine at 11:00 AM on January 23, 2008

The Bourne Supremacy had the camera man from HELL. I heard he was back for The Bourne Ultimatum so I didn't even try to watch it in the theater.
posted by tkolar at 11:03 AM on January 23, 2008

I normally don't get motion sickness - car, boat, watching Blair Witch, Bourne Ultimatum, whatever...but I was completely ill about 30 minutes into watching Cloverfield. I was nauseous for the rest of the night, too.
posted by Liosliath at 11:18 AM on January 23, 2008

"I mean, I'm so hot right now, I'm about to pass out," said Torri Crane, apropos of nothing.
posted by anazgnos at 11:47 AM on January 23, 2008

I loved Bourne Ultimatum in the theater, but watching it on an HDTV with an 8ms response rate turns it into a streaky, dizzying mess.
posted by nervestaple at 11:50 AM on January 23, 2008

This would have made an excellent addition to the already-open Cloverfield thread. On Slashdot.
posted by Eideteker at 12:42 PM on January 23, 2008

We didn't even get to finish Flight 93.

Neither did they, unfortunately.

Also, tangentially related, Gaspar Noe supposedly used "brown sound" during the opening sequence of Irreversible. Although it was disorienting because of the swirling arial camera, I neither felt vertigo nor nausea nor did I defecate in my pants, but I did get a headache.
posted by Falconetti at 1:03 PM on January 23, 2008

The Wang Chung video is not making me nauseous.
But it is annoying the piss out of me.
Besides, Dance Hall Days was their good hit.
posted by the sobsister at 1:18 PM on January 23, 2008

s-sister--
Is the UK version a cover or a bootleg?
'Cause I just saw a blond white guy. Singing in English.
posted by Dizzy at 2:06 PM on January 23, 2008

I got sick at Blair Witch.

But what’s all this about camera motion?

(Actually, I was sitting front row for Blair Witch in a tight theater so I had a crick in my neck, no blood flow, I’d just eaten a really heavy meal, and the popcorn was assy. I thought something was really wrong with me like I was having a heart attack or something, because until that point I’ve never had motion sickness in my life. I’ve been on boats, ships, I swim in the open sea - I’ve flown home in the back of a medivac flight swinging in a cargo net in a tropical storm drunk on Rum. So this was completely new to me. It’s like farting for the first time at 30 years old. Freaks you right out. Haven’t had motion sickness since that movie either. Probably colored my perspective on it)
posted by Smedleyman at 3:41 PM on January 23, 2008

The effect in that Wang Chung video really did start making me feel horrible and weirdly transfixed. I had to turn it off.
posted by painquale at 3:52 PM on January 23, 2008

Back when The Blair Witch Project was run (at either Cannes or Sundance, I forget which) a friend of my wife attended; this was before the hype and buzz, and it was a late-night showing. Basically, none of the general patrons in the screening had any idea what the movie was about, or that it wasn't a real documentary.

My wife's friend said that after the screening let out (on a dark street in an unfamiliar town) it was the most scared she had ever been in her life. I envy her that; I would have loved to have seen that movie without the context that it was fictional.

pardon my tangent
posted by davejay at 6:07 PM on January 23, 2008

davejay - digression is the soul of good writing and the keeper of...uh...words...and stuff. Meh, it’s far down enough.
That’s kind of how I saw it. Had no idea what it was about. Just heard it was ‘great’ and so forth.
Through the whole film I kept thinking “Baba Yaga” and I expected to see the house had chicken legs or something. Any of the creepy stuff Baba Yaga was known for (steel teeth, all that - whole lotta ‘yikes’).
Which, if you think about it in the kind of realism they were going for would have been uber-freaky.
Kind of a disappointment when it was just about killing and stuff. Made for a nice symmetry in the story tho. And the ‘less is more’ approach - the ambiguity - worked on me.
I’ve got a hella imagination, so I was a bit freaked.
posted by Smedleyman at 2:08 PM on January 24, 2008