Don't be fooled by high rating

Rating: 4/10 (7 February 2014)

This is NOT a good movie. It has a terrible plot, awful characters that you couldn't give a toss about, wooden acting of the "scream and run" variety, takes an interminable 30 mins to get going (said 30 mins taken up with incredibly boring scenes from a farewell party for upwardly mobile brats - out of frustration I fast forwarded to the good bits) and has an annoying shaky cam for the entire duration. The camera wielder makes things worse by being whiny and yelling inanely throughout the movie. It was an enormous relief when he finally snuffed it. Nothing in the movie made sense especially not the gang of idiots charging around a city in the middle of an intergalactic war and not taking the many opportunities to get out. And last but not least, the ending. Seriously bad & totally predictable. There were so many plot holes in this thing it resembled swiss cheese. I wont go into them all, I notice some other reviewers have covered some. Suffice to say, there are dozens more of them. Nothing is explained about the sudden arrival of the monster either. No build up to it or context at all. This leaves the whole movie without much of a foundation. There was nothing here that was original, fresh, unexpected or interesting apart from.... THE SPECIAL EFFECTS which were reasonably good. All of my points are for that and that alone. If only this had been more about the monster and less about the use of terrible gimmicky camera and sappy half-baked love plots.
Watch The Host instead, it has heart and soul as well as a brilliant story and awesome effects. Or even The Bay which, tho not as good as The Host, has a far superior plot, engaging characterisations and better acting than Cloverfield. The Bay is so tightly constructed you are pretty much convinced it actually happened. You'd be hard-pressed to find a plot hole & the back story is brilliantly conceived. But more importantly the directors etc had a MILLION TIMES better grasp on how to use the "found footage" concept to it's best advantage to draw the viewer into the "reality" instead of annoying the cr*p out of & alienating them.