Flawed.

Rating: 5/10 (17 August 2008)

FFirstly I have a problem with the current vogue for hand held camera shots. They spoiled the Bourne Ultimatum, ruined Hancock and countless other movie simply by making watching the movie a race between hitting the and credits and having to charge to the toilet to throw up because of motion sickness. The prospect of watching a movie shot entirely on hand held camera didn't fill me with joy.
I decided to wait until the DVD cam out. The wobbly cam nightmare is minimised and I stand a greater chance of finishing the movie and not becoming reacquainted with my lunch.
Sadly it wasn't really worth the wait. It was a fairly standard monster movie whose central conceit, while compelling in theory, fell into so may traps as a result of that conceit it became frustrating. Most annoying was the fundamental flaw that we saw what the characters saw. Now, okay, the immediacy was a fine idea, but as is usual, for most of the movie, Hud was simply looking in the wrong direction, swinging round to just miss something that had already passed; focusing on the relationships between a group of largely unlikeable people.
We got mayhem, we got destruction, (believable and well executed), we got a bunch of people I had little empathy for and all the while Monsters were eating Manhattan. I know what I wanted to be watching!
The only time this approach had any impact was during the death of the principal cameraman. That was genuinely shocking and unpleasant, neatly counterpointed by the auto-focus being unsure what to focus on. Yay Pathos.
Having said that, I just wasn't convinced by the Monster. Design-wise, it was pretty nondescript. The 'polyps' or 'barnacles' or whatever they were were just too unwieldy; too crablike. If they were originally undersea creatures, they looked as if their weight and shape was simply unsupportable in an air atmosphere.
I think the thing that annoys me most is that somewhere in here there was a germ of a good movie, but style and conceit took the place of a solid story and believable characters.
Shame.
If you want a decent 'Monsters attack a Town' type movie, with better design, more rounded characters and the bleakest ending imaginable, give the much overlooked 'The Mist' a look as it is everything that Cloverfield should have been and aspired to be.
And I hear there's going to be a sequel. Oh dear.