There are several moments in the movie that build a great deal of tension. Watching people roam through dark subway tunnels, eyes darting back and forth searching for creatures that could easily kill them is nerve wracking. Scenes of confused people wandering the streets after hearing a lot of commotion and explosions suddenly bursting into screams of terror as the city starts crumbling and the world goes to hell around them is moving. A late scene where a man is screaming "Jesus Christ please forgive me" in blind terror as he faces certain death at the hands of a monster is gripping (and reminiscent of a similar scene in the original movie "The Wicker Man.") As much as I hated, loathed, and despised every single one of these vacuous yuppies and wanted them all to die horribly, hearing this guy scream for his life moved my heart with empathy.

That's about it. That's about the only time I was moved with anything but extreme irritation at the empty-headed rich selfish bastards that populate this movie. Let me start off by saying that I'm tired of people bitching when I say a movie was slow and I'm tired of people saying that I didn't enjoy movies with a slow build because I don't have an attention span. Fuck that condescending bullshit right off the bat. I have absolutely no problem with a slow building plot as long as I give two shits about the characters in the slow build. Here, I didn't. The people in this movie bicker and bitch and moan at each other to the point that I was ready to kill them myself after about two minutes. Twenty minutes into the movie I and my friends look at each other and we all said "This is IT?" in almost perfect sync. THIS is the movie everyone was raving about and insisting I HAD to see it? Not only do we see the characters bitch and moan and fight incessantly through a shaky handheld camera, the REASON for this footage of constant fighting makes zero sense.

I'm not just nitpicking here. Because the movie is told from the perspective of a bunch of clueless idiots who just happen to be running from a monster (or rather an unseen threat that turns out to be a monster) we don't get much explanation of what's going on. That's fine, the Cloverfield fan club is right when they say that makes the movie more realistic because clueless people running in the street wouldn't know what was going on, that I have no problem with. But those same people, when I complain that it makes no sense at all to film a bunch of fighting for your friend's going away present tell me I'm reading too much into the movie and those scenes have to be there and it's not totally realistic because otherwise we wouldn't know who these people were. That I can't get behind. You can't cry realism when someone complains about the handheld footage, saying that any explanation would have been totally unrealistic and the movie has to be totally realistic and then argue that it's ok for the movie to be unrealistic for purposes of plotting. It doesn't fly. We're not just talking about a few scenes of fighting here, we're talking about almost a full half-hour of people screaming at each other and insulting each other that's supposed to be a going away present. "Congratulations dude! Watch this present to remind yourself why you're glad to be leaving us all."

And the intelligent plotting doesn't stop there. After screaming at a girl he'd dated (or fucked, to be more accurate) and dumping her earlier in the night (again caught on camera by his friends as more fun footage for his present) we're supposed to buy that once this woman is trapped in her apartment she then calls the guy on his cellphone and asks him to rescue her. Not the police, not neighbors, not the front desk staff or anyone who might have been able to help her. I know some guy who'd just screamed at me and insulted me earlier in the night would be the first person I'd call if I were trapped in my apartment with the world ending. Not only that, we're supposed to believe the guy ACTUALLY GOES BACK TO SAVE HER and even more unbelievable, his friends agree to go with him, bringing the camera of course.

Come on now, give me a break! We're not shown any deep connection between these characters, all they do is fight and they don't seem to like let alone love each other enough to trek through the city filming everything around them in a quest to help their friend save his ex booty call. It makes no sense. I can't get behind a movie that screams realism as an excuse for its entire existence and then uses a bunch of unrealistic plot contrivances to further its story. It's insulting and it pisses me off. Yes, cool monster, yes, the trudge through the tunnels and the city is sometimes harrowing if you ignore the stupid reason why the people are there in the first place and ignore the lame running commentary from the total idiot who's doing the filming and ignore how stupid it is that when the cameraman gets killed or maimed either he or someone else decides to pick up the camera and continue the filming not once but TWICE. Ignore all that. Watch a cool monster destroy the city and eat a bunch of yuppies. MMM MMM good filmmaking.

I understand why people loved this movie. The scenes I mentioned above in the "good" section of this review were enough to tug at my emotions and my fear of what I would do in a similar situation if the world was falling apart. The best apocalyptic films do that, and this one did. It takes a great amount of talent to make me care about characters even for small scenes such as these when I fucking despise the characters as much as I despise the ones in this movie, and I sincerely mean it when I say I respect the filmmakers for this. It just wasn't enough to make me forget WHY I hated these assholes so much in the first place, it wasn't enough to make me forget that the movie had insulted my intelligence more than once, and it wasn't enough to redeem a movie that could have been great. I wanted to like this movie so much that I was shaking with fury when it ended, but I've since calmed down and I might even buy the movie because some of the scenes are so good that I do want to watch them again. But I can't and won't ignore what I didn't like about this movie and I can't in good conscience recommend it without explaining its flaws. If you disagree with this review, then I'm glad you enjoyed the movie as much as I wanted to. I hope you enjoyed it enough for the both of us.

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