Cloverfield

I am just flat out physically nauseated after watching this smut. Not because it was frightening, but because of the damn shaky camera work. This movie has been hailed as a masterpiece for cinema verita where the movie is being filmed as if it were a home video. Goddamn filmmakers. Slapping shit together of someone running and dropping a camera and shaking the camera is not filmmaking. It's bad reality television. This movie has truly made me hate this style of filmmaking even more than I already did. Filmmakers think it makes the movie more real for the viewer. No, it just shows the low budget of the film by shaking the camera so you can't actually see anything except peoples feet while they are running. Great job!

Basically, the movie is about an attack on New York City by a large, nameless monster told through the home movie of teenagers. Even the characters in this movie are douchebags. I really don't give a damn what happens to them merely 5 minutes after the movie starts. They have no depth, no development. Just a bunch of kids running around trying to be heroes. The only redeemable acting in this movie is by actress Lizzy Caplan who plays a sarcastic girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her acting was the only believable acting in the whole movie. The so-called hero is a pompous douchebag who is blindly followed around by his friends.

I give some praise to the monster in this movie. While not terribly original, it is still better than some monsters in monster movies. It vaguely resembles a bat with no wings. The movie makers also throw in some smaller versions of the large tyrant in order to make the attack more personal and up close. No explanation for the attack is offered. Probably for the best actually. Any explanation given by these lazy flmmakers would have made the film that much less believable or likable.

It is truly such a pity cause this could have been a good movie. The idea of a gigantic havoc-wrecker plundering NYC is not new, but a well-made monster movie is always welcomed by me. But, better camera work, better script, and better actors are necessary to solve the many problems with this movie.

I give it 2 out of 5 stars. The only reasons for 2 instead of 1 is Lizzy Caplan's above average acting and the development of a semi-unique creature.