Watch it just to see New York getting trashed, again.

Rating: 6/10 (6 February 2008)

A 'Godzilla' movie for the YouTube generation. A giant building-sized monster came out of nowhere and just wrecks havoc in New York City. The thing that makes this movie different is that the entire film is captured with a hand-held camcorder by a bystander. Couple that with the excellent special effects and the movie has that gritty and yet out of this world realism.
Conventional narrative, this movie is not. I heard a lot of disappointed groans from the audience at the end of the movie. Just treat the movie as a documentary and that this film was just extracted from the rubble during the aftermath of the monster's attack. This gimmick has been done before in The Blair Witch Project. These two movies really share a lot of similarities by the way.
The movie production tried very hard to give it that amateurish film-making look at the expense of the viewer's comfort. The cam is so shaky I heard stories people throwing up while watching the film, so beware. It didn't bother me but my only beef is that the lighting is so dark. A lot of times I can't figure out what the hell is going on or even the entire look of the monster. I guess it's the intent to show as little as possible to make it more ambiguous, and hence scary.
A very good monster movie but the acting and story are so-so. Watch it just to see New York getting trashed, again.