First up: I LOVE MONSTER MOVIES!

I grew up addicted to Godzilla. So now, any time a monster movie rolls around I just have to go see it! Anything that can eat a city is just beyond cool IMO. In recent years thought the monster movies that have come out have all been a bit...well... weak. The American Godzilla remake was lame, Peter Jackson's King Kong sucked if you ask me, and Alien vs. Predator was just mindless entertainment. It is about time that we got another good monster movie. On that score Cloverfield has delivered. It is good though, not great.

Now Cloverfield is, essentially, a cross between Godzilla and The Blair Witch Project.Taking the classic elements of the "monster eats Tokyo" movies and shooting it entirely from a first person point of view.

The filmmakers choice to use this style is well motivated by the films contents and characters. It really lets you get into their heads, especially the main character Rob. You feel for this guy. You feel his motivation, his anguish, his blind terror. However you also feel that the rest of the characters are a little two dimensional. I wouldn't call this strike one against the film but it is definitely a foul ball.

The style is also one that not all viewers are going to appreciate. Though it really works from a storytelling perspective, the shaky unstable images will leave you with a slight case of motion sickness here and there.

Love or hate how it's filmed, Colverfield does contain some great elements. The intimacy of the first person point of view gives a wonderfully frenzied edge to the action sequences. Since the characters never truly know what's happening to them, you as a viewer are left equally in the dark. The atmosphere of fear this creates is fantastic. It's almost Lovecraftian. Almost...

Having only seen brief glimpses of the monster but witnessed clearly the devastation it can cause, the scene has been set perfectly. As the characters flee for their lives you know, you just know that things are going to end very, very badly. It is this sense of anticipation that drives every good horror story. There is a lot to be said for shock value, that one quick jolt of fear that causes the adrenaline to really get pumping. Real horror however exists not in what a person sees... but what they expect. How this expectation horizon gets manipulated, built up and broken down, is what separates great storytellers from the rest of the pack. The storytellers behind Cloverfield did a pretty good job but more than once in this film they really dropped the ball.

As the characters begin their first attempt to leave the city there is a brief discussion about which way they should go. This may seem like an insignificant few seconds of the film but it is in this little moment that the expectation horizon is set, simply because they mention the bridge. With that the sense of fear disappears. Before it even happens you know the characters will head for the bridge, something will slow them down, the monster will attack, and one (or more) of them is probably going to die. This is exactly how it then goes down.

Strike one.

Now of course this would happen any way. It is a monster movie after all. Had they never mentioned the bridge however, the viewers would not have known what was coming until it was on the verge of happening.
No time to react, no time to prepare or predict, just enough time to wish you could tell the characters to run and then BAM! Then it would have been scary. Then it would have been sad to see a character die. As it is... it was just predictable.

After this stumble though the film comes back strong. A few more brief shots of the monster add nicely to its terror factor and double its threating nature when it is seen spawning hundreds of miniature monsters that are very quick to go on the offensive themselves. Learning that the love of his life is trapped within the city and dealing with the sudden death of his brother, our hero Rob now goes from flight to fight mode and his (remaining) friends are along for the ride. (While their decision to join him may not seem like an intelligent one, it is something I feel many people, myself included, would do. I'd rather die a stupid hero than live as a sensible coward. )

The film now goes from strength to strength. When the bullets and rockets of the first military assault start flying around the characters heads you really get the sense of just how powerful these weapons are. Making the fact that the monster is resisting them all the more terrifying. Trapped in the middle of what is now truly a war the characters flee for the subway. Safe from the battle above their heads the characters now have to deal with their own emotions. In a truly heartbreaking scene Rob receives a call from his mother. Having faced all he has tonight he must now also tell his mom that her son is dead. This intense moment of human drama binds you the character so well that the whole fumble on the bridge can be completely forgiven.

Then they make the same mistake again...

As the characters flee down the now disused subway tunnels they notice an army of rats all running in the same direction. Again the expectation horizon has been set... And again the filmmakers timing is just a little off. The mini-monsters attack. Though the fight its self is frenzied and exciting, the element of surprise at its start is lost and with that much of the horror that could have been achieved.

Strike two.

One miraculous escape later the characters, one having sustained a bite wound (you just know that's going to end badly), have broken out of the subway and returned to the surface. Here they are met, and aided to a small extent, by the military who have set up a makeshift hospital in this area. Now you'd think this is very fortunate as it is just what our heroes need after their little encounter. Well unfortunately the military have just gotten their orders to evacuate. No time to fix you up we're outta here.

Oh... and remember that bite wound? Once it gets spotted there are several frantic screams of "We got a bite!" just before the character is dragged of to a quarantine tent where she explodes.

Seriously...she fucking explodes!

Now no explanation is given as the rest of the characters are dragged out pretty quickly. No explanation is needed either. This film has one truly great saving grace: this is the coolest movie monster since The Balrog in Lord of the Rings! Maybe (give me a few day to think this one over) even as cool as Godzilla himself! I mean it smashes cities, makes people explode, and the best is yet to come.

Repeating the cycle of the first half, Cloverfiel now goes through a number of strong scenes that portray wonderfully the human drama that is unfolding in this story. The rescue of Rob's love interest requires more than a little suspension of disbelief but come with enough of an "ouch factor" that it's more than worth sacrificing a little logic for. It really made me cringe, which is good.

Finally the moment of escape arrives. Flying out of the city on helicopter the characters bare witness to what they believe are the monsters final moments. Seeing it get bombed repeatedly and collapse into a cloud of dust and debris. The words "Target is Down" get spoken by their pilot and for the third time the expectation horizon gets built up... and is executed perfectly!

You know that monster isn't dead... you know it's about to come back and do something horrible... it's just a matter of when. The filmmakers got their timing spot on. You don't see the whole monster coming out. Just its very large, full of teeth, about to bite the chopper in half mouth!

Now some good flying manages to save the chopper from immediate annihilation (and digestion) but it is not enough to keep them in the air. The characters crash down in Central Park, where we know from the titles at the beginning of the film their story is destined to end.

Having dragged themselves from the wreckage the characters are about to try and make a run for it when Hud, whose first person view point we have been sharing through out the film, runs back to grab the camera he has used to document the nights events. Once he has it he is forced to look upwards into the face of the monster that now stands towering over him. Now many people will see this moment as a spoiler... that the monster is far more terrifying when left up to their imagination than when show directly. I disagree. For in that face you do not see an emotional monkey like King Kong, or the force of nature that is Godzilla. Here you see the face of an intelligent creature. One that scares you not because it is terrifying but because it chooses to be terrifying.

I truly wish the movie had ended with that monsters mouth closing in and devouring Hud. Perhaps just letting the camera drop to the ground and show us the final images of Rob and his love fleeing. A final look at the skyline as the monster now must make its escape form the military "Hammerfall" operation that will level all Manhattan. That would have been a good ending. It isn't what happened however.

Now firstly you'd think Hud would have seen a monster the size of a building standing there before he went to pick up the camera... but you can forgive a little mistake like that once in a monster movie. That the monster then chews him up is what you'd expect. I didn't expect, nor appreciate, the fact that the monster then spit him out seemingly in one piece. He was dead, yes... but in one piece. Why else did the two remaining characters run up and try to find out if he was OK?

Oh...and where exactly did the monster go now? I guess Hud didn't taste very good so he went to rinse his mouth out somewhere. Not really plausible but the best explanation I can come up with. And why doesn't he eat the other two as well?

As you can imagine Cloverfield has now some what lost me as an audience member. The ball has been dropped once more and since it's the end of the film they're not going to bother picking it up again. Instead our hero, Rob, picks up the camera (again...why?) and heads into a nearby tunnel with his love. There they take cover, say a goodbye into the camera, and, just before getting blown to hell, tell each other "I love you."

Now I have no problem with a sentimental ending. I really don't. But it is something that needs to be handled properly and properly built up to. Cloverfiled did neither of those.

Strike three. You're out.

One thing I hate in movies is wasted potential. Cloverfield could have been great. Instead it provides 90min of good monster movie entertainment laced with some very fine dramatic elements that falls just short of the mark. It is odd really, as you seem to be dealing with filmmakers who are both capable of storytelling the Human element with great intensity, as well portraying the monster aspect with the horror it requires. It is in the moments when these two aspects meet that Cloverfield ultimately fails. A few instances of bad timing and a sloppy ending diminish what could have otherwise been a classic in it's genre.

Speaking of which: I've heard several people say that this film has re-invented the monster movie genre. Now while it is a major step up from Jackson's King Kong and the American Godzilla film, it does not come close to rivaling the great monster movies of yesteryear. Anyone who disagrees should go watch the original Godzilla (Gojira) again.