The characters are great and they don't make any decisions that anyone in love wouldn't make. And fuck, that monster was awesome.

And to answer a few questions: the monster stuck around Manhattan because WHERE THE FUCK ELSE IS IT SUPPOSED TO GO???? CONNECTICUT??? You're really a nitpicker and not looking for a good time if you ask that question. And why the main characters kept running into the monster? Because there was an area of NYC that the monster was staying in...and that was near Beth's apartment. That, and if they DIDN'T run into the monster there really would be no movie. Would you like the movie more then?

Heres a thought for you all....IT's A FUCKING MOVIE!!!! No one in film has ever acted realistically, horror films would be fucking boring for a start - no one would go off investigating strange noises. Action movies - the good guy would be dead within seconds as the bad guys CAN actually aim a weapon. Romantic comedies - no, the geeky sad-sack loser won't get the super model to love him, she'll focus on the rich guy.

Now, when you've got a giant monster tearing up NY, I think little things like logic can go out the window, as can pretending you know how a giant aquatic killing machine behaves. I just got off the phone with David Attenborough and he told me that they react EXACTLY as depicted in this film, what do you think of that asshole?? You must be some kind of joyless, empty fucker to nitpick a popcorn movie in this manner, go throw yourself off a bridge.

Of course, there are some narrative choices that I wish they hadn't made, and a couple moments that feel more scripted than "found footage", but overall, this movie was a success. I was pretty hyped for it and I wasn't disappointed.

I know the movie needs a plot reason to move forward...I know there will be those that will say "Who wouldn't go and try and find/save the woman you love"...but these guys are ALSO all supposed to be MBA's and incredibly smart yuppies, not to mention that as NYers they WOULD have lived through 9/11...at which point they'd already know that when a city of nearly 10 MILLION PEOPLE goes batshit with fear and terror it's pretty much all but impossible to simply walk the streets hoping to romantically and magically find your lover.

And from what I read, the subplot is that they AREN'T boyfriend and girlfriend...that Rob feels guilt that they had sex, he took this job, and he never told her how he really felt. Which begs the reality check question: when the shit hits the fan, why WOULD Rob expect Beth to stay put versus fleeing the city as fast as she can?

So I'm really looking forward to this...it sounds like a lot of fun based on the intitial reactions of some...but I also REALLY hope this won't have silly plot holes that once the lights come up I'll find myself sitting there and saying "Heyyyy, wait a minute--!!!"

B b b b
I i i i
G g g g
L l l l
I i i i
O o o o
N n n n

We can dance like a lion
He is the king of beasts
And when he starts growin'
Destruction he’s sowin'
Takes down buildings like a wildebeest

...But the lead actor and even the side actors/general population of the city operated in some kind of alternate reality. Nothing they did ever made logical human sense given the appearance of a deep sea monster and what they were now up against and what people really would be doing.

So I liked THE HOST, it was fun, but it's exactly what I was talking about above. I hope the CLOVERFIELD people act like people really would when facing such odds.

To the haters..... If you can't *****SPOILERS***** figure out why a guy, one who just saw the most important person in his life killed, would try to rescue the second most important person in his life --the woman he's been in love with for years-- you should just stop watching movies altogether.

Plus, what movie do you want to watch? The recorded footage of the Nebraskan tourist couple who taped the creature for five minutes and were then helivacted to safety... or the footage of the guy who tries to rescue the love of his life who called begging for his help? This is why we see THIS footage, 'cause it's the most interesting.

AND! Would you guys really have wanted to have a bunch of floppy-headed Emo kids as the main characters versus the oh-so hated "yuppies"? Young well-dressed 20-somethingers at a party in New York? Who would have ever thought.

Would the movie have blown your mind if the monster took off for New Jersey? Then you would have done away with the handicam aspect and just made it a conventional movie? The main characters then, would they have been the military chasing it, because it couldn't be regular people?

Yeah, I bet Drew Goddard is shitting in his pants that your fantastic ideas don't put him out of a job some day.

Sorry, but it's true... see for yourself and find out.

The smoke monster on LOST will get a better send up than this... I hope.

Also, there is NO backstory to the monster... this film is poorly done... it's as obvious metaphor for 9/11... should've, could've been done better... Paul Greengrass is still the "shaky-cam" title holder...

Rob had a job?

Thank you, douche.

NOTE TO JJ: I'm just kidding about punching you on the street but seriously, I would like to have my money and my two hours of my life back.

Ok, maybe *one* time. LOL

I really didn't want to dislike this film or hate on it for no reason. I felt that I fell right into the demographic that would have loved the hell out of this movie but it just didn't do it for me.

So now the gripes:Everybody was too clean. I got dirtier at the LA County Fair. Nobody portrayed real pain or fear or shock. Not enough screaming. Lily was barefooted and didn't even muss her petti.

Hud was dopey. Hudson, from ALIENS, was actually a realistic, kickass Marine. Even kickass Marines act like Hudson did in extreme stress.

No personality to the characters or the monster. Godzilla had personality. Even Alien had personality. Also, the ALIEN movies generally work because we have more of a working class cast. I got past this by imagining the cast of JUNO in the same situation.

Good movie. Better acting, less bland creatures (even in glimpses)and more grime would have elevated it.

That being said, they could do several sequels without ever straying from the timeline of the initial attack. They could literally do sequels that take place on the same day as the first film. Obviously the experience of such an attack would vary DRASTICALLY from one person to the next, depending on the decisions made.

One angle that I was thinking they could follow up on is having a film crew that is making a documentary on a particular police unit. Once shit goes down, the police unit would obviously be called to action. As we’ve seen in real world scenarios, film crews are often willing to risk life and limb to capture ground breaking events. Then you have the cops being asked to risk everything for the safety of the people, during the most incredible crisis they could ever imagine. All the while the film crew records the events, and wrestle with their own willingness to risk their lives to record such an amazing event.

Again, although I do think it’s entirely possible to do them, but I REALLY hope they don’t do a sequel. I’m just saying…

I’m inclined to believe that if (and I say if, because the ending of the movie does not make that clear at all) the monster survived the final assault depicted in the movie, it would a) not be near the ocean, the movie ended in Central park, b) the carcass would not look at all like that. After you see the movie I think you’ll understand what I’m saying.

I really don't understand this trend in critical review these days for something to only be seen in black and white. Either it sucked unholy ass or it was better than a threesome with two supermodels.

I posited what I thought would be a better treatment of the same concept, which I did fundamentally like. The whole unexplained business didn't really bother me, nor the bizarrely indestructible nature of the creature which, despite some less than amazing design and cgi, could have been severely awesome. I did like a lot of elements of the movie, including the Starship Troopers sea-mites. Though I must say I thought the "reveal in the darkness" moment in the subway was incredibly hackneyed and really obvious. Every monster movie ever has pretty much done that same shot. If you don't like my idea, fine. It doesn't really matter seeing as neither of us are in much of a position to make such a film anyway, but I just thought I'd show that I did like the idea and just found the execution stupid.

It's interesting that people are bringing up 28 Weeks later as a comparison because I really loved that movie. Even the teleporting dad zombie moment. I accepted that bit of silliness largely because the movie had earned my trust with the awesome attack on the farmhouse, gouging of eyeballs, sniper run, soldier roast, helicopter/lawnmower scene, napalming of London etc etc. I could tolerate a bit of plot inconsistency. Besides, that last shot in the movie was the fucking TITS.

So in summary, calm the fuck down. I didn't like the movie as much as you did, boohoo. Learn to accept that humans are capable of having DIFFERENT FUCKING OPINIONS.

SPOILER WARNING

We then see that same perspective as she gets BRUTALLY FUCKING BEATEN TO DEATH

END SPOILER

I think I'm going to watch that movie again. Bliss.

Um, my advice to anyone who is not used to horror flicks but loved the original Jurassic Park and has a soft spot in his or her heart for apocalyptic monster stories is to see this movie with a friend who has already seen it and can talk you back down to earth when you begin shuddering as walking in a daze as you exit the theatre. A warning: there will probably be at least one or two IDIOTS in the room who will boo at the end of the film and demand their money back. Try not to walk over to them like a desensitized zombie and start beating the living day-lights out of them as you begin crying and sobbing as you vent your nerve-shot emotions.

What is the monster's origin? Was it from another dimension accidentally opened via a portal aboard the overturned tanker in the harbor? Was it a creature flung to Earth threw space? Was it a science project that grew out of control? Was it an adult, or a baby? Was it a creature from deep, deep within the earth that tunneled to the earth's surface and surfaced from beneath the tanker?

What were those smaller, spider-crab-like creatures? Were they baby Cloverfields?

Did the creature remain on the island because the military had ringed the landmass with something that the monster couldn't take?

Is everyone in New York that attractive?

Insert question.

Whatever it is, the Cloverfield monster is like nothing we have ever seen in mainstream science. Comparing it to a dolphin just doesn't cut it for me.

Was it intelligent? I don't know. At one point, it sniffed a little human unfortunate enough to have found himself looking up at it, sniffed him, and ate him.

And Mr.F.N.Sunshine? You're a college student in Massachussettes.

But after all that speculation/hype/excitement, we just got another Godzilla flick with a Blair Witch gimmick.

It wasn't bad, sure. But it wasn't a "reinvention" (as Harry says) either. It's just two gimmicks squished into one in a decent manner. That's why you have people disappointed.

While I admit to being disappointed, I still thought it was a decent movie. But it's not the kind of movie I'll tell people to rush out and see either.

...was fan-freakin-tastic. I'd love to get my hands on a copy.

As to the movie itself, I thought it was interesting and worth sitting through. Certainly not worth the kind of hyperbole that Harry, in particular, has heaped upon it, but I'm used to that.

I realized pretty early on that the context of the film would be narrow so there wouldn't be any "answers" (and more to the point, answers weren't relevant) and that the characters weren't engaging enough for me to care whether they got stomped/chomped or not...but I dug it as a visceral experience, and thought from a purely cinematic point of view that they did a great job of juxtaposing the epic scale of the events with the tiny filter through which we view them.

One thing we can both totally agree on is that every movie watcher has their own tastes and if they enjoy/dislike a movie that is up to them. I won't be buying Cloverfield on DVD when it comes out but I'm sure lots of people will and that's totally ok.

Actually, I'm very interested in seeing what Drew has to say about this movie. He's the only movie reviewer on this site who seems to have a "grown up" opinion about films. I love the work Harry ("King of The Nerds" he was called by a recent news article about Cloverfield on the net) puts into his site but his reviews seem like they were written by a rabid fifteen year old fanboy. I have much respect for Drew and I hope he gets his review (positive or negative) up so he can throw in his two cents on the subject.

As a cryptozoologist who's quite used to looking at photographs of strange carcasses that happen to wash up on beaches, I can 100% assure you that those are sperm whales, which are famous for eating giant squids, which, until Cloverfield, had been the largest of all officially recognized mysterious forms of sea life. Hence, the people behind the site are trying to tell you (whom they had expected to be familiar with everything that I just told you) that the sea beastie that eats kraken for dinner just got eaten by something even bigger.

ht tp://images.google.c om/images?hl=en&q=beached+sper m+whale&gbv=2 (remove the spaces)

ht tp://images.google.c om/images?hl=en&q=beached+sper m+whale&gbv=2 (remove the spaces)

ht tp://images.google.c om/images?hl=en&q=beached+sper m+whale&gbv=2 (remove the spaces)

ht tp://images.google.c om/images?hl=en&q=beached+sper m+whale&gbv=2 (remove the spaces)

anyway, i dont give a flying fuck where the monster came from or why its invincible or any of these unanswered questions. In fact, I dont really care about that shit monster at all. thats the problem. it sucked. this was almost (ALMOST) the american Godzilla + plus shaky cam. It had the same problem: i never got to see it blow shit up real good (though it was better in that the monster did indeed destroy shit, i just didnt really get to see it thanks to Hud the retarded cameraman! All I got to see was a bunch of bad actors run around. Imagine how awesome this movie would be if it were filmed traditionally.

htt p://images.google.c om/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en &q=beached+blue+whale

The movie would start off with a camera panning around a dingy little shithole of an apartment, cluttered with dirty dishes, grubby laundry, and countless 80's action figures in original packaging that line every shelf. The cameraman sneaks into an adjoining room, where a fat guy in a stained wifebeater is passed out on a bed, dog eared copies of High Society strewn all over his G1 Transformers collectible bedspread as he snores. The cameraman sneaks closer, and giggling, he sticks his ass up to the snoring guy's face and blasts him awake with a resonant fart. They scuffle around for a second then the cameraman says, "Get ready, you fat piece of shit, I'm not going to miss out on my copy of Halo 3 on account of your lazy ass! Now make sure you have your mom's credit card, I'll bring the food and the chairs, we'll get a good spot in the line. Don't forget the Magic cards, dick!"

Then there's a bunch of jump cuts as they take the train across town to the Best Buy, mostly snippets of dialogue of them complaining about popular movies and games.

Then it cuts to a different scene a few weeks later, a bunch of baggy clothed nerds sitting around a basement, all focused intently on a TV screen showing some FPS multiplayer game, as death metal plays softly in the background. There is little conversation as they play, everyone is cheering on the main nerd (Rob) to unlock some ridiculously hard achievement. Suddenly, there's a terrible roar and a loud explosion, and everyone reacts in horror as the lights flicker, but then give audible sighs of relief to see that the power has not gone out and the X-Box didn't reset itself. The cameraman, Duh, asks "What was that?" but nobody seems concerned, still focused on the TV. "Probably just another garbage truck hit the building. Just keep filming, he's about to do it." Then the power goes out for real, and everyone starts swearing angrily, but nobody gets off the couch.

Rob and Duh and a few others try to go find the superintendent, but when they get to the bottom floor, they find everyone in the streets gathered around the statue of liberty's severed head. Duh pans the camera around, and while everyone else's back is conveniently turned, he catches a full body shot of a giant monster standing next to the Empire State building to show it's exact scale, and he yells for everyone to look, but they turn around too late and miss it.

Everyone starts arguing about the situation, some people saying it can't possibly be the real statue of liberty because that could never happen. Duh mentions that he got the monster on tape, and it cuts back to the nerds on a train again for a second, then when it cuts back everyone is arguing. Duh swears it's clearly a giant lion, but others seem to think it's Cthulhu. One guy keeps screaming about Voltron coming to save us.

As everyone speculates about the monster and where it's headed, the camera pans over to Rob, who has decided he's going back to his mom's apartment. Duh assumes he's going to save his mom, but it becomes clear he's going to rescue his priceless DVD collection and his X-Box with all his saved information on it. But Duh is insistant on not leaving the scene until he can ensure that the video footage he's shooting will be easily watchable, and demands that they look for a steadicam. Rob, however, is a closet Dawson's Creek fan and, remembering an episode, he pulls a disabled guy out of his wheelchair and proceeds to push Duh around in it, providing a smooth, clear shot of their journey through the streets.

They make their way through the city, and Rob gets a call on his cell phone from his crying mother, who is paralyzed from fear and trying to fend off alien lion cubs that are trying to break down her door. "Mom, I don't have time for your bullshit right now, just tell me one thing, is everything in my room still OK?" Then the monster shows up again and eats some more people, and our protagonists run away, angrily bickering about the proper classification of the monster and where it originates from.

They escape to the subway, and attempt to travel through the tunnels to reach Rob's mom's apartment, but they are attacked by little tentacle faced lion cubs, who bite one of Rob's friends making him break down crying like a little bitch. Then as they exit the tunnels, they are taken into custody by the military, who bring them to a triage center. Rob takes one of the commanding officers aside and demands to know what is going on, and the officer lights a cigarette and launches into a detailed flashback exposition of the previous 3 years of outer space research and everything that has led to the monster showing up and destroying the city. Then he stubs out his cigarette and fixes his steely eyes on each one of them. "Even though we know exactly what it is and where it came from, it's still winning. OK, WE'RE MOVING OUT! Lock and load, gentlemen, tag em and bag em, we need to hit it hard and fast, I want short controlled bursts! Perhaps today is a good day to die!"

So Rob and his buddies grab Duh in his wheelchair and roll out towards Rob's mom's apartment. They arrive to find it all smashed up, but Rob lives on the ground floor so they just break a window and go inside, where they find Rob's mom gruesomely torn apart on the floor, but miraculously the DVD collection and X-box have survived intact. Rob cries, however, to see his mint-in-box Star Trek figures have been destroyed, but his friends (just Duh and some random fat girl, at this point) group hug him until he calls them queers, and then it's kinda awkward for a second.

So they load up and head back to the makeshift military camp, only to find it smashed in the center of a giant lion-esque footprint. But they find a working walkie-talkie on the ground and manage to hear that there is a helicopter waiting down the street to evacuate survivors. They show up to see the monster fighting the military, and the scene lasts for a good 40 minutes, with clear in-focus shots of the monster being attacked by every manner of modern military hardware.

Then they get on a helicopter that transports them approximately 50 feet before it crashes. Rob and the fat girl scramble from the wreckage as the monster looms into view, but Duh refuses to comprimise the integrity of his footage by moving the camera around in a jerky attempt to escape, and is gobbled up and chewed thoroughly. The camera then falls to the ground and is picked up by Rob (who is still sifting through the wreckage for his DVD's.)

The crackling radio in the crashed helicopter alerts them to the fact that Voltron has been called in, and will be leveling the city within minutes in an attempt to stop the monster. Rob and the fat girl escape to another tunnel, where Rob gets all emotional, reading the summaries of his favorite movies from the DVD covers to the barely conscious fat girl. He starts sobbing when he realizes that the situation he is in now is just a badly ripped-off version of the Blair Witch project, a movie he hated in theaters for "pandering" to the mainstream. Then he hears the familiar approach of Voltron about to impact the city, and turns to his fat female companion as the tunnel begins to shake apart. "LOOK AT ME! I'VE NEVER BEEN WITH A GIRL BEFORE! CAN I TOUCH YOUR BOOBS? I SAID, CAN I TOU--"

And then it cuts to black for a second, and then back to the two nerds on the train, victoriously holding their copies of Halo 3. "Today was better than chocolate covered pussy juice!" And off in the distance, you hear a lion roar.

Yeah, Cloverfield was quite good. It was an alien shock trooper with nanoscale armor for those demanding answers, not that there needs to be that many.

Or, it could be a robot operated by teams of Lions.

As I read this TB and Harry's TB, I wonder about the movie fans out there. There's alot of cynicism. It seems like people DARE movies to entertain them!

I don't know, I guess it feels like some people can't enjoy a movie unless they can shred it to pieces. "Look! It's not perfect! The big studio screwed up! Ha! Haa!"

I started to rant about this but I cut it back to here. Fuck it. Go on, shred away. Have your fun in your joyless little lives!

Many of those who have been criticizing the film on this board for these very aspects are about as young as those with whom I watched it. I found that much out by adding their Talkback names to the end of the URL myspace.co m/Talkbacknamegoeshere

That they incorrectly inferred from the viral marketing that the focus of the film was a monster have none but themselves to blame; in the viral marketing, the people and the collective chaos are the aspects of Cloverfield that are constantly emphasized, not the monster.

My prediction is that this amazing, amazing movie will be unfairly doomed because of misdirected marketing. Cloverfield is an intense, action-packed drama, not a monster movie.

"I don't know man, to me it seems like some of you guys are coming up with some pretty poetical interpretations of these things. I mean, I saw the trailer - the Statue of Liberty head rolls down the street and then there's a roar. I saw the poster - the Statue of Liberty with its head ripped off and claw marks on it. I don't really know how else to interpret that but "giant monster" and I don't know what it was you were hoping for when you said it might be "something else." "

------------

Agreed, somewhat. I certainly didn't dismiss the idea that it was a giant Godzilla-like monster. But I couldn't dismiss some sort of alien invasion either. Hell, I wasn't sure what to think. We got a lot of disjointed images leading up to the film. Yes as you said, you see the statue of liberty head in the streets. But we also get a scene with some weird stuff going on behind a medical tent with strange looking shadows and strange sounds. We get weird disjointed dialog. You just didn't *really* know.

In the end itn turns out it's just a Godzilla variation. Again, not BAD per se, but this certainly doesn't live up to the mystery surrounding it. The mystery leading up to the movie was the best thing about it IMO.

Snarky, I totally agree on the Godzilla thing but still have to ask, do you think that it was perceived as such when initially viewed or is this more likely a perspective reached YEARS afterward ... I remember watching all those Toho flicks on Saturday afternoons (SuperHost!) when I was a kid, and I don't remember anyone prefacing them with the disclaimer that they were SERIOUS ARTFUL DISCOURSE on the horrors of war in a post-atomic 20th century.

But seriously, it was an ok movie that gets a MAJOR pass for it's origin outside the U.S. I suppose that's ok, I watch alot of Asian imports and it's definately nice to see one getting accollades and not just a sub-par remake, but c'mon people ... "The Greatest Ever"?

I certainly wouldn't say that, but then, I wouldn't even say its better than CF.

I'm not saying this isn't a Godzilla-like monster (in that it's a representation of ecological recklessness, bio-warfare, or some other symbol), but the point is, none of us know. When people dismiss the movie as "Blair Witch meets Godzilla", they're obviously doing it as a superficial insult. While it has some elements of both, I repeat my earlier question . . . could you find me the last movie that had no elements of a preceeding movie in it?

None of them knew they'd have to run to the subway. None knew the lice would follow. None knew they'd have to go up 50 flights of stairs, then walk over a buildings roof. If they knew these in advance and disregarded them, then I agree it would be insanely stupid (even for Rob). But because one thing happened after the other, they became invested in finishing what they started. People do weird things like that when they're in shock. Not bright, but hardly the mind-boggling plot flaw some around here think it is.

It's funny that Jaws keeps getting tossed around as the Nirvana of suspense movies. As I recall, one of the three men in that little boat couldn't swim and was deathly afraid of the water. He had a wife and two kids, but went anyway. Could you give me a premise more ridiculous than that?