Not at all what I expected!

Rating: 3/10 (8 June 2009)

First of all, why "Cloverfield"? Second; what is that monster, where did it come from and why and how did it end up in New York City? What are the little offspring? Are they somehow poisonous? Is there a reason for all of this happening?
And by asking these questions I believe I have struck the nerve of why this isn't a good movie!
Cloverfield leans upon (at least) two different types of movies; the classic monster movies and "the Blair Witch"/horror-suspense genre. But what we normally expect from those genres are explanations. They take the time needed to build a myth or tell the story and background, with answers to most of the questions I asked above. Sometimes these answers are highly imaginative if not far-fetched but that is partly to be expected in this genre and we often accept them. Cloverfield however does not offer any explanations, does not build a myth, does not really tell a story or give us a background for us to engage our imaginations in and does not answer our questions. This reduces the movie to a mere action-without-a-real-plot movie and leaves me pretty unaffected by the story that has just been told!
I can imagine that this would have been a pretty effective game for Playstation or other platforms, but even then I would have liked a little more background story!