Nauseating for all the wrong reasons

Rating: 1/10 (25 January 2008)

The little puddle of vomit in the hallway leading from the auditorium back out into the cineplex when the credits rolled about said it all for 'Cloverfield,' the latest effects-driven thriller from Bad Robot and Paramount.
I remember it well: It was 1985 and my high school chum and I were talking about the latest Pepsi ads which featured the very first "shaky-cam" shots meant to imbue scenes with authenticity. As if anyone with sense enough to bring a tripod for their video camera was almost certainly setting you up. We knew even then that this was the worst kind of artifice and we both concluded that anyone who had tripods available but didn't use them for said purpose was DEFINITELY setting you up.
And setting us up huge was what the makers of 'Cloverfield,' have done with this picture about a giant monster that decides to take a bite out of the Big Apple and totally ruin the evening for a bunch of no-name 20-something hockey-pucks. Shot entirely point-of-view with the world's sturdiest pretend home-movie camera, we watch said hockey-pucks variously fleeing said monster or questing for the rescue of some hottie impaled on rebarb somewhere.
I think I would have suggested lending the film a little authenticity by hiring some F-ing AC-TORS!
Along the way, and with admittedly eerie and downright compelling realism, we are treated to a 21st century version of Godzilla with really nice images of army guys blasting away at the creature and dropping ordnance on it from Stealth bombers. Fun stuff and definitely a recipe for a good time at the movies. Technically, the film misses not a single note.
Unfortunately, rather like the technically savvy but depth-free characters in this film, the story-tellers got lost on their way to a decent theme and decided to substitute the always asinine, "Dude, what if this were real," approach. See if it's kinda real, then you don't really need a theme, dude. No, for real! Otherwise these filmmakers would have to face the fact that the default theme for this picture is as follows: "My girlfriend is so totally hot, I would totally fight a giant iguana to sleep with her again." And naturally, as if this were "Survivor New York," each character dies, one by one, in hideous fashion, in order of significance, as if voted off by the audience after each scene. Once again, only the extremely cute and cuddly survive.
Good monster movies are good because the monster becomes a metaphor for something. Screen writing 101, guys. Come on.
And lastly but not leastly, all of the above criticism will only matter to you if you somehow survive the colossally stupid and ceaseless jiggle-cam cinematography. See, someone forgot to tell the pea-brains who made this film that even though the jiggling didn't bother THEM watching it on a 19-inch video monitor in some editing suite somewhere where idiots edit movies, when the film is done, it is packed off to be shown in these places called "theatres." At these "theatres," a person's entire field of vision will be filled with your stupid footage and when the camera doesn't stay still for a single instant, it can make the average audience-member a little NAUSEATED.
So thank you, Matt Reeves, director of 'Cloverfield,' for making a movie so bad it made one of your audience members puke. I've got you to thank for the dizzying headache I suffer still, nearly 24 hours after watching it. Thank you SO much.
Go back to directing episodes of Felicity.