Just enjoy the ride

Rating: 7/10 (25 June 2009)

Let's get the obvious quibbles out of the way first: that someone, even someone as apparently irritating as Hud, should carry on filming come what may in they way he did is, well, very hard to swallow. And that battery life! As one of the characters might say: Oh my God! But, of course, without him doing just that there would be no film. Second quibble: surely to goodness Manhattan, what with all its gossips and their cells passing on the latest before it has even happened would surely somehow know a monster is on its way, especially a monster as extremely ugly as the one in Cloverfield. Ugly in Manhattan? Impossible. But apparently not. Having made those two, points, however Cloverfield isn't half bad. And the special effects/visual effects are quite remarkable. I'm assuming, of course, that they were special effects and that Manhattan wasn't destroyed for the sake of art. Plot there is none. Dialogue, only what you would hear from any gaggle of self-regarding yuppies fleeing a monster. Beyond that, well, nothing really. But it could have been a lot worse. Quite what the point of Cloverfield is is hard to say, so just enjoy the ride.