Such a waste of a cool idea

Rating: 5/10 (28 March 2020)

This film could have been so much better. I'm very disappointed truth be told.
First and foremost I cannot stress enough how boring and uninteresting the first 20 minutes of the film were (considering this film is not long over an hour that's really not ideal). I didn't watch Cloverfield for relationship drama I came for the giant monster. If you are going to spend 25% of your movie before the monster even arrives at least make the human interactions interesting.
This leads to a second key criticism which is the whole plot of the movie. The initial set up established this potential relationship between Rob and Beth, therefore he was determined to go and find her. I just found this to be so frustrating and ridiculous. It beggars belief why directors and screenwriters are under the impression that audiences revel in characters making stupid and frustrating decisions. Bad writing and plot points aren't the only way to put characters in tense and dangerous situations. The film would have played out much better if they were simply trying to escape rather than rescue somebody. Especially Marlena - why didn't she just bounce - she said at the start she barely knew Rob and didn't remember Hud, so why not just get the hell out of dodge.
Some of this could have been excusable if the characters or dialogue were decent - but both were awful. Rob was an annoying character, Hud was wisecracking as if New York wasn't falling apart. There were so many lines where I couldn't help but facepalm.
In terms of the found footage style I'm not a fan myself, and it just didn't work in this context. There is just absolutely no reason why somebody would continue to hold a camera throughout this.
What I will praise Cloverfield on is the underlying concept. I loved how they didn't try to explain the origin of the creature - it just appeared and started wreaking havoc. Too many films get bogged down in attempting to inject some 'science' into these types of films. Cloverfield fortunately didn't fall into that bracket. The monster design was pretty cool, and props to the sound department for generating some chilling monster screams.
Despite all of the above, Cloverfield isn't awful - there are redeeming features and for the most part it is entertaining. I just wish we got to spend the time with an entirely different bunch of characters.