Cloverfield

A few days before Transformers came out, there was a report on AICN about a set visit that was to see Pre-Production of Star Trek to J.J. Abram's studio on Cloverfield Street. In this report there was a little bit about an untitled movie that they were calling Cloverfield as a coverup. They said there would be a trailer for it before Transformers and boy... was there a trailer. In the time between that first amazing trailer to now, I lost interest the more and more but I heard some great things from a few people in the 3 days it had been out.  So maybe it had a chance of living up to that first trailer.

There isn't much of a story here: Rob loves Beth. On the day that Rob is to leave to Japan, Beth and him get in a fight. That and a giant monster starts fucking up Manhattan. So Rob, his brother Jason, Jason's girlfriend, a random girl and our camera man Hud set out to find her.

This is a good movie with some extremely excellent parts to it. There are points where it is extremely taut and full of tension. Two sequences are extremely good: The tunnel sequence and the last 20 minutes. These moments are great. What the movie promised with the first trailer. The shock, the awe and the sheer terror. 

Then there is everything before the tunnel which is rather boring because we've seen almost all of it before in all the trailers. It is the party and the statue of liberty, that is pretty much it. Then there is the time between the tunnel sequence and the last 20 minutes.  The problem here is that these are the parts of the story that focus on the characters and the characters aren't interesting. We've seen them in every teen movie ever and their acting is flat in the those sequences, but in the tunnel sequence and the last sequence is great.

Oh, for anyone wanting to know any clarification on the monster: you don't get it unless you pay attention extremely hard. That doesn't matter though. This monster defies explanation. It is almost as if somebody brought a Lovecraft creature to life and it is a spectacle when you finally get the ultimate shot of it.

This movie, while it had its excellent moments, is just a good movie that will keep you entertained for an hour and a half.  The problem lies in the characters and how you don't really care about them and for 2 long sequences it lost me.