Cloverfield

So my sister rented "Cloverfield" last night and asked me if I wanted to watch it. I told her, "Nah, Game 6 Lakers vs. Celtics is on. Let's watch it tomorrow." Little did I know that 'tomorrow,' I'd be wasting 90 minutes of my life.

For those of you who need a brief summary, "Cloverfield" is basically the horrific events of a monster attack on Manhattan (gee, where have I heard that before?) captured on tape by a dorky man who never puts his fucking camera down. Genre is sort of pseudo documentary/horror film.

To be fair, I guess I can kind of see what the director was trying to get at. Seeing a terrible atrocity from the perspective of a single common citizen could potentially do well at humanizing those events a bit more. However, getting a realistic sense of what an everyman would go through in that type of situation would only seem to work if the entire movie was actually realistic. Unfortunately, that movie fails in ways not limited to the following (if you don't want the movie spoiled, I suggest you skip this part):

1. The thing attacking Manhattan is a giant Godzilla ripoff whose skin seems to be composed of little crossbreeds between a spider and Dry Bones from the Mario games.
2. I will say it again, the man DOESN'T PUT HIS CAMERA DOWN! If a monster did indeed ever attack New York, I highly doubt that any sane human being running for his life would have the ability to hold a video camera upright for a full hour without either being hit by falling debris or having one of his friends punch him in the balls for being a moron.
3. Throughout most of the movie, one of the main characters attempts to save his sort-of-girlfriend-but-not-really by running to her apartment in the precise area where the monster's running rampant. Why? Because she called him at the onset of the attacks and muttered, "I can't move...BLAAAH!" *phone connection dies* But don't worry, because her all but decimated apartment building leaning against the side of another skyscraper isn't going to stop this man from hopping to her apartment off of the roof of said skyscraper, finding his perfectly alive and coherent 'It's-Complicated'-on-Facebook and RIPPING A JAGGED METAL ROD FROM HER HEART! That, of course, wouldn't be as ridiculous if she had actually died from that instead of getting up and running alongside her friends throughout New York. In heels.
   
4. Not only is the cameraman insane for carrying that damn thing the entire time, but he also finds time to make some really stupid jokes at the worst possible moments. Picture this: a group of four people in their mid-20's walking down a subway tunnel, their only light source emitted from the camera (it's only practical use the entire movie), trying to save one of their friends and then escape the city before they're eaten or crushed by the Statue of Liberty's head. One of the guy's brother died in one of the attacks. The guy holding the camera says something to the effect of, "Hey, it'd be cool if that thing were from another planet! Like Superman!" What the hell?

Man: Say something to the camera, honey!
Girl: Hi! It's 6:23 AM on May 23, and I just yanked a steel blade out of my heart an hour ago!



Maybe I'm just viewing this movie too critically. No, I don't expect it to be entirely realistic, but to me, this movie just seemed so poorly scripted and executed that any sort of abnormality only gave me a bigger headache. Then again, I'm not one for horror movies in general, but I managed to peacefully sit through "Disturbia" without too much frustration. I guess sitting in my basement with my sister, both of us trashing the movie while watching it, probably made the bad things stand out. I'm sure that plenty of people out there would LOVE this genre of cinema (whatever that is). Unless it's produced better, I'm just not one of them.