I think it would have payed to have it not be a big monster, or at least one that's much more vague than this one, because the fact that you at least know it is a Big Monster in itself takes a lot of the realism away instantly since we know there's no such thing as big monsters. I think that the style of the movie being that everything is supposed to be really realistic and breathless and terrifying just doesn't co-exist successfully with a big monster. Why not make it a more realistic threat, like a chemical cloud (like Don Delillo's novel White Noise if you're familiar) or a terrorist attack of some nature? I guess I'm just too much of a realist, too.

On a side note, have you seen John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness? The big monsters in that film were really scary to me. They were always sort of obscured by a creepy amount of shadow, and you could never quite put a finger on what they were, but they seemed really familiar at the same time like they came from a nightmare you had at one point.

The mosnter in Cloverfield looks like a boss you'd face in Halo or some other such next gen video game. It looks like a rejected Doom 3 monster or something.

I think it would have payed to have it not be a big monster, or at least one that's much more vague than this one, because the fact that you at least know it is a Big Monster in itself takes a lot of the realism away instantly since we know there's no such thing as big monsters. I think that the style of the movie being that everything is supposed to be really realistic and breathless and terrifying just doesn't co-exist successfully with a big monster. Why not make it a more realistic threat, like a chemical cloud (like Don Delillo's novel White Noise if you're familiar) or a terrorist attack of some nature? I guess I'm just too much of a realist, too.

On a side note, have you seen John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness? The big monsters in that film were really scary to me. They were always sort of obscured by a creepy amount of shadow, and you could never quite put a finger on what they were, but they seemed really familiar at the same time like they came from a nightmare you had at one point.

The mosnter in Cloverfield looks like a boss you'd face in Halo or some other such next gen video game. It looks like a rejected Doom 3 monster or something.

I think it would have payed to have it not be a big monster, or at least one that's much more vague than this one, because the fact that you at least know it is a Big Monster in itself takes a lot of the realism away instantly since we know there's no such thing as big monsters. I think that the style of the movie being that everything is supposed to be really realistic and breathless and terrifying just doesn't co-exist successfully with a big monster. Why not make it a more realistic threat, like a chemical cloud (like Don Delillo's novel White Noise if you're familiar) or a terrorist attack of some nature? I guess I'm just too much of a realist, too.

On a side note, have you seen John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness? The big monsters in that film were really scary to me. They were always sort of obscured by a creepy amount of shadow, and you could never quite put a finger on what they were, but they seemed really familiar at the same time like they came from a nightmare you had at one point.

The mosnter in Cloverfield looks like a boss you'd face in Halo or some other such next gen video game. It looks like a rejected Doom 3 monster or something.

And the creature ain't scary at all. For a bit in the movie they were being pretty shy about doing a big reveal and I was encouraged that maybe they'd leave a lot of it to our imaginations, but they do finally show it several times full body in the film. It's not laughable, but it's not even in the same ball park as really scary movie monsters like the Aliens and The Thing (John Carpenter version of course.) And this is a problem as the movie takes the monster very seriously.

Also, the cast is about 95% models looking actors, so I kind of wanted them all to get stomped instantly. At least Blair Witch cast some dumpy looking nobodys for their leads. That personally gets me behind characters more in a situation like this because they are more realistic.

I was pretty impressed by most of the CG work. The monster did look pretty much like it was actually in the home video and news footage you would see. At different times though the little spiders looked kinda video gamey though.

I feel the movie is also kinda pretentious in its assumption that not telling you anything about the monster's origin is going to make it that much more intriguing– this would be a good idea in a movie where the monster ITSELF is intruiging, but this one is pretty far from it in my opinion.

It's alright dumb fun, though.