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Cloverfield

Almost good enough for its low (relatively speaking) budget .

• Structure/Plot, Character

Did anyone root for the friends to reach that girl? Did anyone care to see them live? Just because this was a high-concept flick doesn’t mean it could’ve gotten away with not making the audience connect with the characters or their objective. The movie could’ve remedied the situation in one of two ways: made us root for the characters to be killed by the monster…basically a tongue-in-cheek approach, or given them a save-the-day objective, like reaching the location where a bomb was left by the military.

The video camera look and perspective were fine, but that doesn’t mean 99% of the footage had to be shaky. That worked well for the rumbling and escaping scenes, but it was ridiculous for the others. “Stable” and “hand-held” do not need to be oxymorons.

• Logic

What was Cloverfield?!

Where did the monster come from?! One character had one theory about it…ridiculous. The filmmakers probably thought they were doing something different by not pinpointing its origin, but that was really one more thing that prevented the flick from having any depth, from being anything more than a popcorn flick memorable for just the running time.

Producer J.J. Abrams at ComicCon.

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