Cloverfield Review: A Six-Foot Meh

Just got back from Cloverfield and I have to say it was a bit underwhelming. Of course the hype meter was slowly rising throughout the week as my friend Nick went and saw it three times (almost saw it a fourth with me tonight). It is awful to go into a movie with high expectations, but I did and I was a bit let down.

First of all the camera takes some getting used to. If you are susceptible to motion sickness either skip it, wait till it's on DVD or sit way in the back. I had to sit back as far as I could in my seat in order to bare it. I should note that the theater I went to actually had a sign warning viewers of this, so I'm not the only one. Eventually I got used to it, but during the non-chaos scenes (i.e. the first 15 minutes or so of the movie) why was it shaky? What 20-something can't hold a camera straight for over three seconds? I thought we (20-somethings) grew up in an age where handheld cameras were second nature to us. I could be inebriated on a unicycle and come up with steadier tape.

My other complaint is the lack of epic-ness. The most epic thing about Cloverfield was the music in the closing credits. How can you not have a thing attacking Manhattan and it not have some epic feeling to it? Some of this had to do with the length of the movie, which clocked in at 85 minutes. I feel for $10 and a promises of a thing (trying not to give it away) attacking the city should at least take a whole two hours, maybe more.

All in all, it was still fine. However, if you have a problem with the camera work it will ruin the film for you. There is no way around it. If I had to give it a letter grade I would give it a C+/B-. The positives are obviously the fun action and thrills along the way in any movie like this. There are definitely some tense parts that will have you holding your breath to see what is going to happen next. Extra points for the unique point of view. Despite it being a negative for some it actually serves a solid purpose and allows for more suspense since the viewer is not allowed to be all-seeing.

A quick side story: FOX 61 News completely spoiled the main selling point of the movie, which is "what the hell is that thing?" They actually told viewers during a news segment what the thing was. This was also on either a Saturday or Sunday, so only a couple days after the film came out. The Internet is pretty big on a thing called spoiler alerts, but I figured television caught onto this idea long ago. I guess that's what I get for watching FOX News.

Here's the Cloverfield trailer if you happened to somehow miss it over the last few months or need a refresher.

One last thing: There was a teaser trailer for another J.J. Abrams' (producer of Cloverfield) project, which is being filmed now -- a new Star Trek. The scheduled release date is for Christmas of this year. The teaser can be found here.