A good concept that ultimately fails..a letdown

Rating: 6/10 (12 February 2008)

As like most people, I was intrigued to see 'Cloverfield', mainly because I wanted to see what was causing all the havoc in the preview. After finally watching the movie, unfortunately, I still can't tell you. What does that tell you? This is one of those movies where you just happen to drop in on an event of some kind and then decide to leave at some point. Things just happen, and then it's over. There's no explanation whatsoever as to what the monster is, where it came from, how it 'works' and what exactly happened in the end. We barely see it, which is inexcusable considering we've actually WATCHED (what we COULD watch anyway) the movie at this point. I could only guess that the military bombed the city but there's no indication as to whether or not the monster was actually killed. The shaky POV camera is a cool concept; it's creative.I could really appreciate the approach they were attempting. However, at some point it must be remembered that the audience is attempting to WATCH a movie, and it was damn near impossible to do so. There was just TOO MUCH movement with the camera that most of the time you couldn't tell what was going on.and after a while the whole shakiness of it all got pretty annoying. Again, I see where they were trying to go with this, but the audience has to make some sort of sense of what's going on, or else what's the point? I don't know if Marlena suffered from 'Alien fate' and a baby monster ripped through her, or if the soldiers actually put her out of her misery after realizing she was bitten.with only one viewing I thought it was the latter, but who knows? Speaking of the characters, they were all pretty annoying; especially the 'cameraman', Hud. His job, along with cameraman, was to provide comic relief throughout; but he's not funny at all and is just a stupid idiot. We're forced to listen to him say the most asinine things and repeat them 20 times. After a while I said to myself, 'enough already, shut up and run!' I really wasn't sorry for him in the end. We get a pretty cool close-up of the monster before he does away with one of the characters, but again, we're still left in the dark as to what it is exactly. Throughout the movie we get bits and pieces of it, never getting a definitive shot of it.
Another thing, how in the hell did that camera make it through the film? It should have been destroyed either by being dropped as many times as it was or, and this is much more likely, the battery dying.HELLOOOO!!!! There is no way that camera would've lasted through all of these occurrences. Also, maybe I'm behind the times, but.since when did video cameras have night vision? Anyway, the audience is left with as many questions as it had when it first saw the teaser trailer with explosions and the head of the Statue of Liberty (poor woman) flying through the air; with no movie title or nothing. HUGE letdown if you ask me. I'll admit, it all came off as pretty realistic due to the shaky camera technique, but that only led to the huge downside of the audience essentially not being able to watch the movie. I was really into it.but I was waiting for some answers and didn't get any. 'Cloverfield' had GREAT potential, but fails in the end.
6/10