The Movie That Could Have Been

Rating: 6/10 (19 February 2018)

Cloverfield, is the first feature length debut for Matt Reeves that was released in 2008 and was a film shrouded in mystery. The very little detail released beforehand, left audiences stubbled and intrigued to check the obscure movie out. Upon its release the film was met with mixed, but mostly positive, reviews; and almost a decade later I finally got the chance to watch Cloverfield for the first time. Overall my experience with the film was mostly good, it didn't do anything to blow me away, nor was it offensively bad.
Cloverfield tells the story of a group of friends trying to survive a monster attack in New York City. The film stars actors who were, at the time, mainly unknown, like a very young Lizzy Caplan and T.J. Miller; the acting itself was serviceable, save for a couple weak performances, everybody at least felt convincing, like they were going through some shit.
Now the main spectacle of the film, is the setting and monster. Although we never get too many good glimpses of the creature, it is a neat design and felt threatening. Despite actually taking place on a sound stage, I felt the filmmakers did a great a job at faithfully recreating New York, as I was totally immersed in the world. Also the use of very little CGI was great, it never took me out of the movie when I saw something that wasn't practical, the FX were used when it needed to be and that was great.
Now the biggest issue in the movie, is its story and character motivation. The story centres around three friends travelling across the city to save their friend, despite numerous people telling them that part of the city is lost and if they hope to survive they're better off following the hundreds of people in the military advised rescue plan. The motivation to save this one character is extremely weak, and out of the three friends who tagged along, really only one of them should have gone to rescue this other individual. Along their trek these characters also make really poor decisions, that left me shaking my head on multiple occasions. I felt that many of the deaths that occurred in this movie could have been avoided if the character's the audience is supposed to "root" for weren't so dense. With a couple decisions made early on, the events in this film could have totally avoided. It makes me wonder why there weren't revisions to the script to make it tighter, so that every action in the movie feels plausible, rather than the result of bad character writing.
So although the film has many issues in many respects, I did find enjoyment in it, despite the overall forgetfulness of the film. I do see myself rewatching the film sometime again as I enjoyed the setting, and the lore behind the Cloverfield universe is quite intriguing. If you have not seen this film before, I do recommend it, it's an enjoyable monster movie which I'm sure you'll get a few kicks out of. As for me this was somewhat disappointing, as many of the films flaws could have been avoided, so with that being saying said, Cloverfield gets a 6/10.