It Came From ... Who knows, who cares?

Rating: 3/10 (9 March 2008)

Okay, once again it seems as if I missed out on a gigantic hype and once more I do not at all seem to comprehend the huge success of this superficially attractive but eventually bland and substantially void hybrid between an amateur YouTube video and a massively budgeted monster flick. The short trailers and secretive teaser clips didn't miss their effect, as "Cloverfield" quickly became one of the most anticipated movies ever, but does the finished product really live up to the beforehand promoted hype? That's a big fat "NO", in my humble opinion, because all I saw was an overlong (at barely 85 minutes, can you imagine), preposterous and pretentious blockbuster with very few redeeming qualities. This isn't a monster movie at all. Admittedly I might be a bit biased because I swear by the monster flicks and alien invasion movies from the fifties and early sixties, but at least they were charming and spectacular in a non-exploitative fashion. For the action and mayhem in their film "Cloverfield", Matt Reeves and Drew Goddard obviously cash in on the fear & paranoia caused by the 9/11 tragedy. People nervously and hectically force their way through collapsing skyscrapers and giant clouds of dust, unaware of what happened exactly, yet they resolutely continue to register their own misery and agony on a digital hand-held camera. That's like shamelessly promoting voyeurism and gratuitously manipulating people's deepest fears. And yet, whenever parts of buildings are falling down for (still) unknown reasons, "Cloverfield" is a tremendously boring film! Especially the wraparound story prior to the first big bang is almost intolerable dull and overlong. A bunch of irritating twenty-something people gather in someone's Manhattan apartment for a goodbye party and it seems to go on forever. Nobody cares about their romantic issues and the more they open their mouths, the dumber they appear, anyway. Particularly Hud, the guy operating the camera through tick and thin, makes some of the dumbest remarks I've ever heard. The continuously shaky camera wasn't as bad as everyone said, and at several times it clearly noticeable that professional cinematographers are holding the device instead of one of the players. I understand that, since J.J Abrams pumped quite a lot of budget into fancy digital effects that had to be shown at least a bit properly. The eventual nature of the menace actually raises more questions than it provides answers and logic and its design is not the least bit impressive. Rudimentary the concept of "Cloverfield" has a lot in common with the much better Korean monster-highlight "The Host"; only the latter didn't cause motion sickness to any of its viewers of course. "The Host" is just far superior. First and foremost the monster looks more original, the character drawings are more realistic and likable and the production doesn't purely thrive on pretension.