The half of it I saw was great

Rating: 7/10 (21 January 2008)

I was worried that it wouldn't be worth it, and to a certain extent it wasn't, but maybe it will be better on a small screen.
First, I should mention that I don't get motion sickness. I can read in the car, I've flown in acrobatic aircraft and I've ridden out turbulence on planes and boats (and enjoyed myself). So it came as a total surprise to me that I was about to hurl before the monster even showed up. Actually, I think that it had more to do with the "rules for holding the camcorder" that Abrams must have given. Rule #1: always hold it at the same 30 degree right tilt no matter who's holding it or what hand they're holding it in. Rule #2: keep the camera low enough that you see a lot of people's necks. Rule #3: when something interesting happens, shake the camera like your life depended on it.
I actually only saw about half the movie because I had to keep my eyes off the screen as much as possible. However, the parts with the monster(s) in them were incredible. I don't know what it would actually look like if I shot a giant monster on a camcorder, but I'm pretty sure it would look like Cloverfield. Aside from the coincidence that the monster kept wandering across this one group of people in a whole city, you see just enough of it to look believable, without overdoing it. I'd have to see it again, but the monster seems to change scale. At one point it looks like its mouth is big enough to swallow a couple bus's whole, but then it looks just big enough to eat a human. Also, those little monsters, which I assume were its babies. . .what kind of parent drops off its babies in the same place it's under constant attack? I like the ending too, it kind of flips it from a monster movie into a romance. . .in a twisted, Hiroshima/Nagasaki sort of way.