Earlier I wrote about the upcoming JJ Abrahms movie, Cloverfield. Well, I had the chance to see the movie last week with two other friends who really wanted to see it, so here is the review.

It sucked, the end.

I have a big beef with JJ Abrahms. He likes to work with intruiging supernatural plotlines (e.g. Lost) but feels that never explaining or detailing why they exist in the first place is somehow Hitchcockian and clever. Personally, I think he’s lazy, and doesn’t have the chops to actually give his audience any kind of intellectual payoff.

A while back Abrams was in a toy store in Japan and saw a bunch of Godzilla toys and thought it would be a good idea to do a Godzilla movie. Cloverfield is nothing more or less creative then a Godzilla movie from a ‘Blair Witch‘-style perspective - if you want more than that, or a better monster movie, you are out of luck. What you see is what you get.

Unfortunately, this story isnt about the Godzilla-type monster, its about a bunch of lame twentysomething characters  who I couldnt care less about, played by relative unknowns. Least of all is the character Marlena Diamond, played by actress Lizzy Caplan. Marlena has all the appeal of girl who has gotten really moody about her recent bad hairdo, and has way too much screen time.

The beginning of this movie, as I have read others write about, is incredibly LONG and boring, as the characters are introduced during a party but the party itself is completely uninteresting and serves and absolutely no purpose whatsoever except as an overly utilitarian device to introduce the characters.

The reason for this is based on the biggest gripe most people have about this movie, and that it is filmed in the handheld camcorder style of The Blair Witch Project. Obviously, the writer needed to come up with a *reason* someone is holding a hand held camera while people serially introduce themselves and their relationships to the audience. In a ‘regular’ movie, the story would begin and the characters would naturally reveal themselves in a way which wasn’t so abrupt and divisive.

Abrams wanted to recreate the ‘real’ feeling of YouTube submissions with the hand held camera. In this sense, the technique works - however, it is the only technique in the movie, and about 90% of the time you are praying to god that the characters happen to save an injured dolly operator or even tripod somewhere in the destroyed city and decide to use it. Or - even better - the story could have revolved around a *professional* camera operator with a steadicam who was shooting b-roll in midtown when the creature appeared - I would have gladly swallowed that premise, and so would have my head, stomach, and inner ear.

I read in an interview with one of the directors or producers that at one point, the camera operator was running through a tunnel and accidentally slipped and fell, dropping the camera, and got back up and kept going. They thought it would be a great idea to leave it in the movie because it was real. When I saw this scene in the movie, all I could think is that if they had reshot it without dropping it I would have been 50% less annoyed for those 4 seconds.

Now, there are indeed moments in the movie which are admittedly well done and genuinely scary, and the special effects of the monster are indeed superb - but they are the minority of the movie and they don’t even begin to carry it.

The movie is graciously short and the end comes suddenly, and its not any kind of payoff (like Lost) at all but just more or less a relief that you can get off the seasickness boat.  I have heard that there is some kind of secret transmission over a handheld radio at the end of the movie as some sort of Easter Egg but I could not care any less whatsoever what it is and I was probably already running for the exit when it occurred.