Boring, Manipulative, Unconvincing, and Dull

Rating: 3/10 (21 January 2019)

20 January 2008. Warning: Spoilers. Except for the very last shot, Cloverfield is a rip off of The Blair Witch Project (1999) of the worst kind. It attempts to take a hand-held video cam and add a more complex plot along with special effects and expect to actually re-create the magic of the original attempt. Unfortunately, from a personal perspective, this was one of the worst movies I've experienced in a while. There is something to be said about the appropriate media format for the theatrical experience. It was the very idea of this was a video tape that distanced me from the action, I didn't feel that I was part of it, I was watching a filtered version, buffered by time and distance. Most of the movie was boring, like watching a home film movie without any editing. The interesting part is that the attempt to imply property of the U.S. Government, as a document, it would have been more believable and effective if the movie had been based on a collection of edited videotapes of the same event. The beginning segment, pre-monster scenes are too manipulative, the exaggerated attempt to make amateur mistakes in filming the scenes became too clique and made the movie feel unreal and fake. The first obvious technical flaw in the movie occurred with the relative quickness of the live televised news report that was recorded by the apparent video cam. The news report came so suddenly right after the strange pounding, vibration that it added to the manipulative unreality. There was a underground scene where the light from the video cam is used to light a path, except what we mostly see are the lighted backs of people that deflect the light so the people shouldn't be able to see where they are going. There is also a scene where an injured woman is haphazardly taken care of, unlike what would occur in real life and then another women is pealed off a metal rod that would most likely of killed her (as the rod itself was likely sealing broken arteries). We have a helicopter that of course gets too close to the monster, we have only the main character's surviving the crash and not the crew. A more effective movie was Brainstorm (1983) that took virtual reality to a new level more almost a quarter of a century ago when it was released, bringing the audience into the movie not pushing them away. The restrictive nature of the single hand-held camera perspective omits so much more film scenes such as the man who falls to his death off a bridge. There is so much that is missed, so much continuity lost, so much choppy editing that there flow of the movie is overly disturbed. Hopefully, film makers will make movies not this return to live reality movie making unless their prepared to really work to make it more authentic, audience involving, and emotionally interesting. Three out of Ten Stars.