Corrected entry: In the rooftop scene, the Empire State Building can be seen lit green in the background; towards the end of the movie, Rob says that it is "Saturday May 23." The day/date correlation reveals the events of the movie to have happened over the night of May 22-23, 2009. The Empire State Building, however, was lit in Signature White on May 22nd, 2009, not green, per a search on the ESB's website.
Corrected entry: A B-2 Stealth Bomber is shown carpet bombing the creature near the end of the film. B-2s do NOT carpet bomb. The B-2 Spirit is an advanced aircraft and uses precision-guided missiles. Carpet bombing would be done by an older aircraft, something like a B-52. All of those bombs wouldn't fit into a B-2 regardless.
Correction: This is correctly depicted in the film. The Northrop Gruman B2 Spirit has a payload capacity to carry up to 80 conventional Mk82 bombs, which is what the air strike in the film depicted.
Corrected entry: When he's walking in the subway, Rob's shirt has a dark triangle of sweat (and dirt) on the back. In one clip the triangle is barely visible and the shirt looks a lot cleaner than before. In the next clip, the triangle is very clear again.
Correction: Rob takes his jacket off once they get in the subway station because he is hot and sweating a lot from running from the monster, thus the initial dark sweat spot on his back. They take a slow steady pace at first and since he is walking without his jacket, his sweat spot could have dried in between Hud's cuts. In the next cut they have obviously picked up the pace and the sweat spot appears darker from the long walk since after this cut they have a brief scuffle with the parasites and find themselves at 59th. South Brooklyn to 59th street near central park is not a short walk.
Corrected entry: During the scene where Rob plays back the recorded message from Beth on his cell phone, the background noise in the electronics store fades away and the phone is audible. Then the background sounds return after the message is over. This would be normal in most movies, but is inconsistent with the amateur home movie theme of Cloverfield.
Correction: There is no rule that states that the person who found the footage couldnt have edited that part themselves in order to hear the message.
Corrected entry: I just watched this film on DVD. I know this is a rule of the genre (see 28 Days/Weeks and Die Hard movies) but I find Beth's remarkable recovery from being speared with an iron bar - and stuck there for hours losing blood circulation and muscle cramping - to running around in Central Park helping Rob wholly unbelievable. Maybe she could limp down her building stairs, but whatever physical efforts she does afterwards are even more impossible than those of the monster.
Correction: Perfectly plausible for her to have a huge adrenaline rush because her life was on the line. An audience that is expected to suspend disbelief is not a movie mistake, and we're talking about a monster that eats New York, which is also a total fantasy.
Corrected entry: The spider-crab parasites that come off of the monster are shown to be entirely killable even with a rudimentary club, yet they originate by falling from the monster's body from a height of many stories above the ground. They would splatter and die on impact.
Correction: A cat is also killable with a rudimentary club, but can survive a fall of several stories relatively unharmed. We have no idea of the biology of these parasites, so we can't say for sure what would happen when they fall.
Corrected entry: After Rob saves Beth from her apartment, they work their way up the leaning building. When they reach the top and they are walking up the stairs to the roof, the stairs are perfectly horizontal even though the building is crooked.
Correction: Actually, when Beth and Rob are walking up the stairs, they are on the straight building, not the slanted building. They never walk up stairs on the slanted building.
Corrected entry: At about 18 minutes into the film when Rob, Jason and Hud are on the fire escape talking about Rob and Beth's relationship, Jason says, "You got to learn to say, 'Forget the world.'" But if you look closely at his mouth, you can see he says "Fuck" instead of "Forget". This was most likely censored to keep a PG-13 rating. (00:18:15)
Correction: The DVD I watched last week uses the F word, not "forget."
Corrected entry: In the scene where you see some troops and tanks begin to attack the monster, you see one drive by Hud and it shoots its main gun. Problem is that the tank you see is actually an M109A6: it has to be stationary to fire its gun. Also, the blast would probably give Hud a concussion or make him go deaf.
Correction: The Howitzer's standard firing prodecure would be to lob shells on a distant target from a standing position. Given the current mayhem and close-quarters, the crew is doing whatever it can to take down the monster, so firing 'by eye', while not ideal, is better than doing nothing. As for Hud's hearing, he probably did suffer some damage, but given that he dies before the attack is over, we've no way to test how much.
Corrected entry: When Beth is at Rob's party, she has a gold top, but when they find her at her apartment, she has a plain white shirt on.
Correction: She's at her apartment, where you would think that a change of clothes would be freely available.
Corrected entry: In the scene when Lily tells Hud and Jason about Rob and Beth, the clock skips from 10 past to half past when the camera jumps.
Correction: This wasn't said, but the camera was either turned off or just not used for a few minutes at a time, probably to conserve the battery, explaining why it lasts all night, and the jump from the subway station to the middle of the subway tunnel. Lily told them not to tell anyone what she told them about Rob and Beth, Hud might have held out for about 20 minutes and not filmed any of the party for 20 minutes, then he started filming and told people.
Corrected entry: Just after the monster has capsized the oil tanker they go to the roof to check it out. When Hud says to Rob he should have left town earlier, Rob replies, "Shut up", however Rob's mouth doesn't move. (00:19:50)
Correction: It does move, as does his head that turns his face into darkness so that the shadows across his face and the short time it takes to say 'shut up' under your breath all make it difficult to notice, but it's there in a completely natural way. It is not dubbed in.
Corrected entry: This is a major plot hole. Whenever the camera gets dropped, scratched, etc. it does not show any signs of damage. In many scenes, such as when (SPOILER) Hud dies, the camera stays intact, even though it was just dropped some 30 feet.
Correction: It also survived a helicopter crash, but so did the three passengers. Just because it could be damaged, that doesn't mean it must be damaged. Many factors can be present that allow for the camera to remain working. Not impossible.
Corrected entry: When the Statue of Liberty's head lands and stops sliding accross the street, a street sign painted with 'dead end' is visible to the right. Any other shot after this, the sign is not there.
Correction: I can clearly see "D_AD DE_D" spray-painted on the back of the street sign as it's partially obscured by the pole. Perhaps it says "Dead Dead"? Regardless, the sign is seen while Hud is standing on the sidewalk just as the head settles into the street. Hud then walks into the street and all remaining shots are from the street so that the sign and pole are off screen to our right. The pole (but not the sign) is briefly seen as they are running into the store.
Corrected entry: When Rob is in the electronics store looking for a battery for his cellphone, he picks up a Nokia battery case so he can retrieve his messages. But as he ends the call the sound his cellphone makes is clearly one of a Motorola phone. (I sell both Nokia and Motorola cellphones which is why I know).
Correction: Cell phones allow the user to customize many of the features, including sounds. I know a guy that has a very expensive, advanced-looking, top-of-the-line phone that rings like an old desktop phone with a hard clanging metal bell (very cool). There's no reason Rob couldn't have installed the Nokia sounds out of preference for the sounds his previous phone made (familiarity/comfort).
Corrected entry: When we see the rebar stuck in Rob's girlfriend, you can see the rebar moving up and down with her breath. The only way to get it out of her was to lift her, so it wouldn't be doing that if they could have just pulled it. (The rebar was attached to the concrete behind her, otherwise lifting her would do nothing).
Correction: If you look closely, the rebar is attached to a piece of concrete, but the concrete isn't attached to the floor. Therefore, it potentially could move up and down with her breath (slightly of course), but they couldn't pull it up and out.
Corrected entry: The size of the creature keeps changing. When we see it from the roof of the Time Warner Center, it is almost as tall as the skyscrapers around it. When it steps over Grand Central Station, it is barely taller than the station. When it attacks the helicopter, it's huge again but (SPOILER) when it kills Hud, it is much smaller. This can't be explained by saying it's not in the same position every time, because it is always on four legs. The only time it's on two legs is when it reaches up to attack the helicopter and before that it was walking on four legs and when it was, it was huge.
Correction: Actually, it's not in the same positions each time. The articulation of its limbs allows it to stand quite tall or to skulk at a much lower level, as needed (see special features on DVD). The creature was, of course, computer designed and controlled, and it was automatically kept 'in scale' with the CGI city around it. Any perceived variances are caused by the limits of our 2D viewing of what should be a 3D scene. Our view is 'flat', so that all depth is lost, and distances between objects difficult to judge, and thus, our perception of scale can be distorted.
Correction: Have you ever seen how a cat can curl into a ball or "cat loaf" then stretch out to twice the length? Or how a bear walking on all fours looks smaller then stands up on it's two back legs and looks huge? Probably a similar principal here.
Corrected entry: The shape of the creature's head keeps changing. When we first see its face, it has a large jaw and a human shaped head. When we see it at the end, its jaw is smaller, it has smaller teeth, its eyes have moved to the side of its head, and its head is more round.
Correction: If the creature is an alien. We have no idea of its specific biology, so even if the head does seem to change shape, there is every possibility that this could be a normal physical attribute to this kind of creature. a great many terrestrial creatures change their physical shape over the course of their lives. there is no reason an alien entity wouldn't be able to do the same thing in a much shorter period of time.
Corrected entry: The explosion in the city is impossible. The monster came from the sea, overturning the ship. Now the monster can destroy anything, but there is nothing in the city that can generate that kind of explosion launching debris over the river. Gas stations are the only thing in that part of the city and they cannot produce such a explosion. (It wasn't the military because nothing in the entire film apart from the ending killing the main characters was used. And yes we all know that there are a bunch of unknowns, but since this film really does show us the physical limts of the monster and the military, and the fact that nothing in the city - even power plants, of which there are none - could produce that explosion, makes this event a plot hole mistake.).
Correction: The cause of the first big explosion is never explained in the film, but then many oher things are not. Not knowing what DID cause it does not make it impossible. The Statue of Liberty's head landing on Manhattan is also not explained explicitly (but is obviously not caused by that first big blast). The capsized tanker is shown burning north of the Statue (meaning it also could not have caused the statue's head to land on Manhattan). And we don't see the tanker from the roof earlier because it's far away, hidden by buildings, and capsized at night.
Corrected entry: When we first see the military attack the monster, we see what appears to be an original M1 Abrams with the royal ordinace L68A1 105MM rifled gun. However, this tank has been out of service since 1987, replaced by the German Rhienmetall M256 L-44 120MM smoothbore cannon. Also in this scene, we see what appears to be an M109A6 paladin drive right past Hud, but this would never happen since an M109A6 is a self-propelled Howitzer and would fire from afar - it would never get that close to the target.
Correction: Just a few steps of this creature would place it far from where it was prior to those steps. As such, that Howitzer might have originally been at its proper range, and now is attempting to relocate. Also, Wikipedia notes 8000 M1s of various types are in current service, with 1000 of those being original M1 105mm models reported to likely be with the Army National Guard- the expected first responders in this film's situation.
Correction: This movie was released in 2008 and thus the lighting color used is a future prediction and does not have to conform to historical accuracies and so this is not a valid mistake. It would be like adding a mistake for Back to the Future 30 years later for not have Jaws 19 or flying cars.