I finally saw Cloverfield last weekend. What a complete piece of garbage.

Back in January I was genuinely excited to see it, which is odd because I am neither a big monster movie nor JJ Abrams fan. In retrospect it seems I succumbed to the "viral" marketing campaign. It's hard to argue with the Statue of Liberty head flying down the street, and the idea of a new monster was exciting.

The bottom line is Cloverfield is boring as hell, which is really saying something since it's about a monster ripping through NYC and its 84 minutes long. The main characters are so lame I actually found myself anxious to witness their demise. Plus I figured the movie would be over when we were rid of them(turned out to be true, surprise!). The monster was also really disappointing. It looks nothing like the whale-esqe drawings that piqued my interest initially. Instead, it resembles the nondescript monsters you've seen in every lame video game from the last 20 years.

Since I found the movie thoroughly uninteresting I wasn't compelled to read many reviews. Most of the criticism I did see focused on the steady cam work and/or the undeniable similarities to 9/11. As far as I am concerned the camera work fit perfectly with the narrative style of the film (however flawed), and I will leave the 9/11 commentary up to the residents of Manhattan. From my perspective the principle problem with the movie was its attempt to rethink the monster movie genre.

The main idea is that Cloverfield it would be the first monster movie shot from the perspective of the people getting squished rather than the monster doing the squishing. That seemed like an interesting approach at the time, but ended up falling pretty flat. The reality is the people on the ground (in this film at least) are not interesting, at all. I spent the whole movie wanting to see more of the monster, wanting to know where it's from, wanting to know what the military was going to do about it. Every other monster movie lets people in by giving them this info. And they make the MONSTER THE STAR! I spent the whole time wondering why we were following this preppy dumbass around Manhattan when there is an awesome Monster to watch?

Lesson learned? Sometimes conventions are classic for a reason, because they work.