Quite Possibly The worst movie I've ever seen!!

Rating: 2/10 (18 January 2008)

This may contain some comments considered spoilers, but that may be because I hated the movie so much. I am one of those people that don't want to read too much about a movie before i see it, and I never take a critics advice, I feel i can make my own opinions about a movie, and have never felt the need to comment like this, as everyone has different tastes, and that is why there are different kinds of movies.
I've been waiting since the teaser came out with transformers for this movie to come out. So being as excited as I was I went to see the movie at a 12:01 am showing. Now the thought of seeing what Abrams' quoted as being (and i'm paraphrasing a little here) as this monster being "America's own answer to Godzilla" had me intrigued, I absolutely love Lost, and have started watching reruns of Alias, so I assumed that something JJ would put his seal of approval on would be (even if not living up to the hype)enjoyable and entertaining, better than sitting at home.
You know that party scene that they show in the trailers?? Well thats the first twenty minutes of a movie that lasts about an hour and 35 minutes including 15 minutes of previews and 5 or so minutes of credits. So, we're talking about a mere 70 minutes of monster movie with less than 50 minutes of forward plot progression. The surprises in the movie are so drawn out and telegraphed that when they happen you see it coming and are not surprised. Case in point...
** Spoiler** On the first attempt to leave the city, a mass exodus of people walking across a bridge (somethings gonna happen), Rob gets phone call, for some reason he stops walking, three main characters stop with him, separating Jason (something's gonna happen) who they spent a good majority of the previous twenty five minutes introducing, a girl in heels can push her way back through the crowd but this guy cant?? (somethings gonna happen) then Jason climbs a light pole so that we can see how separated he is from everyone else, then the monster attacks and Jason is gone, yup very surprising.
Thats an example of every "surprise" or turn in this movie. Now there has been a lot of talk that the camera work, having the entire movie filmed from the POV of someone holding a camcorder, is revolutionary and exciting. Yes it was, 10 years ago in the Blair Witch Project. But the main difference is that every once in a while you'd get a steady camera shot. This could have easily been done (to the audiences relief) by setting the camera down for more than 5 seconds, on a table or the ground. The uneasy feeling that they talk about isn't from fear or excitement but from nausea.
The monster isn't seen enough to be scary, the slow reveal of the monster is so slow that without a score by John Williams, its just lacking When you finally do see the whole thing you get the feeling of "that's it?", again another slow reveal that takes away from any excitement felt. The monster looks like the person that designed it had 5 minutes to do it in.
All in all, i have never seen until I saw this movie, an audience (of roughly 300 people) get up and boo. And leaving the theater seeing the faces of the 300 people coming out of the other auditorium seemed about the same as ours. If this movie was any worse I would expect a riot.
So take this for what you will, but when 590 out of 600 people HATE (and i don't mean dislike) a movie, you've been warned. It wasn't bad enough to be good. The surprises weren't surprising, the humor wasn't funny enough to be funny, the scary parts weren't all that scary, the thrills were ruined by slow reveals, the only slightly redeeming thing about this was the last 3 seconds when an unexplained event hints at where the monster may have come from. But at that point i didn't care. It was after seeing the movie and looking at the hype, that if I had looked at the fake Japanese company made for a film website, but not actually mentioned in the film, I'd have known that it was a satellite falling into the ocean.