Beware: Cloverfield is Just Okay

Consider yourselves warned. Cloverfield isn't what you hoped it would be.

Sure the hype was fun, managing to set unprecidented levels of excitement based almost wholly on ambiguity. Even I was easily bought by the illustrious campaign and it was this same buzz that had me showing up an hour early to stand in the cold at one of Austin's amazing Drafthouses for the midnight premiere. And I hate the cold. But don't be fooled, this tainted review is not the byproduct of unatainable standards. In fact, going in I tried to make myself aware of all the ways this thing could fail. And boy, I'm glad I did or else I think I'd be even more livid.

See, what began as an excellent exercise as to all the terrors a person could come up with in order to fill in the gaps the trailer left us wide open immediately becomes its poison once the movie begins because, when matched against the imagination of even a remotely creative person, no amount of CGI or hefty budgeting will appropriately reflect whatever insane notion somebody's already concocted for themselves before the film. What the viewer wants -what the viewer turned out to see- was what the deal was with the 'monster'. Was it a dinosaur? A mutation? An alien? For the first twenty five minutes or so (before the 'you-know-what' begins to hit the fan), you find yourself struggling to care about the flimsy human interest story the screenwriter's trying to set up for you.