Overhyped

Rating: 6/10 (23 January 2020)

With years of hype, Cloverfield was swathed in mystery, with several name changes (even the first trailer released did not have the title attached) and only brief glimpses of the main monster shown before the films release. The film is a science fiction thriller, focusing on the rampage of a monster through New York and was aiming to replace King Kong as the so-called Godzilla of America. Of course, nothing is ever as good as it seems. Clovefield turned out to be a polarizing movie, at best a daring experiment and at worst poorly written and migraine-inducing.
Cloverfield begins in NYC, at a party thrown for one of the characters. The first 15 minutes is boring drama. The 20 something characters aren't memorable at all, but at least most of them aren't overwhelmingly annoying. The most critical point of this exposition is to introduce the audience to the found footage style the movie is in. The movie is supposedly film recovered by the government after the actual interesting part of the movie takes place, but we'll get to that in a bit. The party is being documented by one of the kids, which turned out to be the excuse the director used to explain the entire movie being from the viewpoint of a shaky camcorder. It's an interesting decision, and makes the brief appearances of the monster (unofficially called Clover) more impactful as well as helping the audience to be immersed with the characters. However the shaky view could be nauseating for some viewers, and can cause the film to be a little confusing at times.
After fleeing the party when the monster begins its attack, the party group is split and the rest of the movie is spent by the main party searching for first a brother, and then a past love interest. At this point believability of the characters actions. No sane person would rush towards a large monster they don't understand, or would the military allow several civilians to leave instead of evacuating. The most bizarre point in the movie is when a woman is pulled off rebar, and is apparently fine just minutes later. With a script reworking and some better casting, the film could've been a lot more enjoyable. The only truly gripping moment of the movie in when in the final moments of the film, the only two surviving characters profess their love for each other, as bombs explode around them and the monster roars. The camcorder then skips to an earlier time when the two were on a date, and the film ends on a bittersweet note.
J. J. Abrams (via his influence from Bad Robot Productions) intended Cloverfield to be America's Godzilla, and with a bit of magic it could've been. The film was held back by a lack of emotionally relatable characters, and wasn't quite interesting enough to rely on shock value. The unanswered questions posed in the film makes you think about after it is over. Clocking in around an hour and a half, Cloverfield is not a particularly long film if you don't enjoy it. If you did enjoy it, there's a chance you'll be frustrated with how great of a film it could've been. Overall, I would not consider Cloverfield to be a bad film, just a large missed opportunity.