“No synopsis provided by the studio”

I went to see Cloverfield. That was a mistake.

Cloverfield is J. J. Abrams’ take on an all American monster movie told through the lens of a single handheld camera held by the conveniently named Hud (Haha! HUD! Hahah! Get it? Get it?). It has been described as Godzilla meets Blair Witch Project, and having seen neither of those I can say that is probably accurate. Further plot summary at the end of this post – spoiler warning. (An aside: How the [expletive] does Wikipedia have a 1200 word plot summary!? That should not be possible for this move!)

One of the things I had heard before going into the movie was the possibility that it could incur motion sickness in some people. And while I can easily see how that can happen, the handheld camera gets very jerky at times, it did not bother me very much. Not in that respect. But the camera is set to build suspense, and I am sorry but a jerky camera alone is not doing it for me. It only got annoying.

Then there are the characters in this movie – a more unsympathetic, unlikable bunch of people… I ended up rooting for the monster, and not in a good way like in King Kong, I just could not care less for their fate. The only redeeming quality is that they all die by the end. (Oh yeah, that was a spoiler. Oops…)

That said the movie was pretty.You can tell that effects and lighting had a big enough budget to do exactly what they wanted, and it paid off. Then again I seem to say that about a lot of the movies I have been watching lately – they are ‘bad’ or ‘so-so’ or ‘all right’ or ‘meh’ or ‘the book was better’- but at least they ‘look pretty’. I think I have to stop watching movies that are trying to look pretty and start watching movies that have a story. Or perhaps I should just see Rambo – there at least I know what I’m going to get.

As for the headline, that is the quote I get when I watch the trailer in Front Row. If you think that was a way for the studio not to ruin the story, and build up the suspense, that is only part of the story. The other part is that there is no story to ruin, as pointed out by this very accurate synopsis posted on IMDB:

For 20 minutes it was a going away party, then something blows up so everyone runs down to the street and starts yelling about what to do, then something blows up and everyone runs into a building and starts yelling about what to do, then they decide to go find their friend and go outside and something blows up so they run into the subway and yell about what to do, then there’s a 2 second flash of some spider alien attacking someone so they run out of the subway into the arms of some military triage and yell about what to do, then the person who got attacked was infected and they blow up, so then the people run away and yell about what to do, then something blows up so they go into a building and yell about what to do, then they get their friend and something blows up so they run to central park and yell about what to do, then the monster shows up for 2 seconds and kills the cameraman so someone else grabs the camera and they run under a bridge and yell about what to do then something blows up and its over.

I just saved you $9, your welcome.