Rip-Roaring, Retina-Raping Randomness!!

Rating: 9/10 (1 February 2008)

Cloverfield is a species of film that rarely comes along, due to the potential for utter disaster and bombing at the Box Office. Godzilla sucked, yet the Blair Witch Project was highly successful and deserved the money it won. Perhaps if you heard about a combination of these films, you might be worried that they might ruthlessly combat with each other, until they cancel each other out, and you end up with a bland film.
But you would be well, well wrong.
Cloverfield is probably the most Hollywood Un-Hollywood Hollywood film ever, meaning that its story was 10000000% Hollywood, but was done in a way that isolated it from Hollywood, but a monster attacking New York and a story about ordinary people filming it and the way it was flaunted was also Hollywood. Firstly, if there was a monster attacking my city, I would RLH and go the opposite direction, fearing for my life. And if I was on a street in NY, with M1 Abrams and Marines firing over my head at a 25-storey monster behind me, I would not keep searching for my friend, who is probably dead, but i would burst my eardrums and run, run far, far away. But our motley crew of ''average Joe's'' decide to look for their friend, whom they have not copped on that is probably stone dead. Cloverfield, in all his vehement, hideous appearances, is not like King Kong or Godzilla. Whereas King Kong is a giant ape and Godzilla is a big lizard, Cloverfield is more random and complex. Indeed, his big close-up is negated by the run-up. You would expect him to be something a lot more simpler in his design, but he is quite disappointing to look at. He is no cult monster, like KK or Godzilla or even as cult as the aliens in MARS ATTACKS! But this film is superlative to Godzilla, or the Blair Witch Project, and most certainly Mars Attacks! The special effects are superb, and along with the shaky-camera-work (I would not recommend this to motion-sickness prone people, but, thankfully, I do not suffer from it, thanks to the Incredible Hulk coaster that shook it out of me) make the scenes seem credible. The characters are highly underdeveloped, but that was incidental, as Hud (the cameraman) probably knew all about them, and couldn't be boogied to inform you. The ending is notoriously crap, much like Godzilla's, and also like Godzilla, it left room for a sequel to answer those unanswered questions. I thought that the unexplained attitude was interesting, but I was like ''WTF???'' when the film ended.
The special-effects and exotic choice of storyline attracted me the most, but i deduct 2 marks for the pure idiocy of the logic in the film, but just refer to the title for my verdict on the film.
So 8/10