Boards
Cloverfield, then...
I got to see this in Grauman's Chinese Theater (which isn't really particularly Chinese but there you go) and I can only describe it as massively disappointing, barring how short it was.
Ways it failed:
- The hideously bad, sub-soap opera opening bit that went on for so long and was so awfully acted and scripted that it made the bit before the ship hits the iceberg in Titanic seem good. Really.
- The fact that it really was just a very very very run-of-the-mill obvious monster takes Manhattan plot. Not an ounce of originality was put into this.
- The totally unusued idea of it being filmed from a camcorder. Why do this if you don't have multiple people using the camera? Surely it gives you the chance of killing your 'main' character or at least moving the POV about a bit in an exciting way?
- The way that having it all filmed like that made suspension of disbelief so much harder because, hey, laying aside the incredible battery life of the thing the weird habit people had of apparently editing out random bits for no good reason.
- Supplemental to the above: you can't run while looking through a camcorder screen.
- Hey, why not just have it all happen through the eyes of one person? Ditch the camcorder altogether? Would have been more interesting.
- The bizarre red-herring of the start where a building explodes and there seem to be missiles flying out of it flaming away. This didn't happen at any other time in the movie and means that thinking back over it you're left wondering if it's just meant to make you think it's not a monster at first or something.
- Supplemental to that, the creature appeared to fling the head of the statue of liberty into the middle of Manhattan and then within a minute it's rampaging around and destroying the Chryssler (sp?) building. Geographically that's pretty fucking amazing, given it then spends the next seven hours stuck on the island doing not that much damage.
- And the ending was just taking things too far. How do just the three of them survive a helicopter crash like that? Come to that, how come they're far above the creature and then they get taken down by it?
Meh, lame.