This is not the way it was meant to be

Rating: 4/10 (1 February 2008)

Cloverfield goes for the found-civilian-documentary approach, and then violates it's own rules by adding lame acting and stupid out-of-a-video game situations. The Blair Witch Project stuck with it's documentary style all the way up to the end. That's not the case with Cloverfield, and all those stupid decisions (keep the camera taping while on desperate situations, for example) just destroy the concept of 'reality' it's trying to imply. We end up with a boring story and some glimpses of what could really be a devastating attack on New York City. Lets face it: this thing wants you to feel it did happen. The problem is that it sticks so many regular narrative vehicles it doesn't feel real. Then the pace and ideas start to repeat over and over, until everything feels exahusted. There's one point where you stop getting amazed and just begin to wonder when the hell it's going to end. It's no better than Emmerich's Godzilla.