Pointless and poor

Rating: 4/10 (16 November 2008)

Wow, talk about a movie not living up to the hype, or even it's own trailer.
I can't begin to tell you how disappointed (and sick, more of which later) this whole movie made me feel. Who's fault is that? The studio for all the great hype, the reviewers and critics for falling for it and calling this great? Or for the clear references and rip offs of the 9/11 tragedy that are seen throughout this film? First off, I will mention that I watched this on DVD, and had to watch it in 2 installments. Not because it was bad, but because the whole camera constantly moving around made me feel sick and I had to take a break half way through for fear of throwing up. If you suffer from any form of motion sickness be warned, this will bring it out in you. Making your audience vomit through scares and gross out scenes is good, making them sick because of the way you shoot the movie, NOT good.
The idea itself I like, following a group of random people enjoying a party and then suddenly tragedy strikes and we watch it all unfold, as confused as they are, not too sure what it is that is attacking - great idea. Shoot it from a POV - great idea too. However, it's the execution of the idea that this film is poor.
The whole guy meets girl, guy loses girl, girl & guy get separated by monster attack, guy try's to save girl from monster attack thing is fine, but the story elements within it are quite cliché.
The problem also lies in the POV itself. The point of it is that is supposed to be in the style of a video you might see on YouTube or something, but it doesn't actually look like one, because it's shot in Hi-Def for a start, not a proper everyday camcorder, but also it's directed in a very specific way. Although the camera is POV, it's panning and looking in a very specific way, to show very specific things (be they close ups of hands holding or people faces, or quick look at a monsters leg or something crashing into something). And it's so obvious that it doesn't feel on the fly, or amateurish, as it's actually supposed to be. You're very aware that you're deliberately being shown certain things, which goes against the point of shooting it this way, and stops it being the last video of an amateur camcorder user trying to capture events on camera that the premise of the movie sets it out to be.
My biggest gripe though is that, having seen the 9/11 tragedy unfold on TV, as many of us have done, you can clearly tell someone looked at the events of that day, and the many amateur clips seen on TV during that day capturing the attack, and thought they'd do that for this movie. People in NY being caught up in a sudden unexpected attack - check. Amateur footage of the unexpected attack taking place - check. Famous NY land mark being destroyed - check. Clouds of dust chasing stunned NY'ers down the streets as buildings collapse - check. It's so obvious that it's offensive. The producers, writer and director have taken a national tragedy, turned it into a monster movie and used it to make themselves money. I'm disgusted by the clear 9/11 references in this movie.
Add in the lack of character depth allowed by the story the way it's told in this instance, it means you quite frankly couldn't give a rats ass about them either. I understand the need for picking a bunch of unknown actors to help tell this story, as we need them to be everyday people, but the acting is very poor, with Hud (the guy holding the camera and from whose POV we view the entire movie) particularly cheesing you off, with his light relief/comedy role within the movie just not working at all.
I think this movie was made for 15 year olds, anyone older than that or who actually has a brain will see right through the "creative" execution of POV story telling for the bad, rip off, story that this actually is.