Monster movies are nothing new. The Japanese have done enough over the years to suggest some weird obsession with being wiped out by an extremely large lizard. But other than King Kong, there's never really been a decent American giant monster movie. There was the sad attempt at an Americanized version of Godzilla a few years back that starred Mathew Broderick.

And frustratingly enough, Cloverfield was in many ways just like that sad Godzilla movie.

Godzilla has giant creature from the ocean, Cloverfield does too. Godzilla has a guy with a camera running around filming giant creature, Cloverfield does too. Godzilla isn't really THAT dangerous unless you happen to be a near a building that was currently being destroyed, same with Cloverfield. Since large creature wasn't really that dangerous to individuals they introduced smaller creatures that could follow humans into buildings without destroying them, Cloverfield does too. Godzilla features the dumbest members of our armed forces possible to be responsible for destroying the creature, Cloverfield is not as bad but has its share of stupid soldiers as well. Godzilla has a love interest for the main character that at some point needs rescuing, Cloverfield does too.

I'll stop there. Needless to say, I like Abrams (the writer) and all because of his past works and currently rather enjoy Lost, but come on. They basically did a remake of the Godzilla movie with new actors including a new monster.

But there is one key difference. This movie is presented to you solely from the viewpoint of people caught in the middle. Our heroes are simply trying to leave the city. The only reason they stick around so long is because one of them decides he has to rescue his friend from college that he's really in love with. And this is one reason why I like this movie because there are larger events happening that we are vaguely aware of but our story focuses on what a small group of people are doing because of the larger events that they have no control over and actually have very little contact with in the scheme of things.

Got that?

The entire movie is filmed with a handheld camcorder (assuming it's a fancy one that shoots HD at 24fps) because the main character is moving to Japan for a vice-president's position. Nice job for a guy that looks like he could have graduated from college like three days ago. Anyway.

So the attack begins and everybody does the normal thing, they go on the roof to see what's going on. Explosions and flying debris (that we never learn what from exactly) force everyone down to the protection of the open street. They then witness the head of the Statue of Liberty fly through to land on their street. This seems odd to me now because our heroes live on Manhattan Island which is between the Statue of Liberty, where the head in the street allegedly came from, and the Woolsworth Building which is destroyed shortly thereafter. So, logic suggests that the monster came across the Statue of Liberty, took the head as a keepsake and then later decided to toss it so it could destroy a famous monumental building instead.

Makes sense to me. Who can argue with the logic of thirty foot tall monster from the ocean?

So, the main guy that was going to Japan has decided to go rescue his love that basically teased him with a one night stand and then showed up at his going away party with a date. Which is why we started with the camera anyway, to record the party that is, nothing to do with the date. Our fearless camera dude has taken his responsibility quite seriously in that he has decided he must now record everything that happens to them as they try to rescue the two-faced girl and then escape the island.

At some point they are forced into the subway tunnels to escape the battle raging on between the stupid soldiers and the monster. I say they are stupid because the soldiers on foot witness a tank and a crapload of missiles being fired at the monster with absolutely no effect whatsoever but they still feel the need to shoot small arms fire at the thing in the hopes they get the golden BB just in the right spot on the monster. Personally, if I were on foot and the best I had was a small arms automatic rifle I would have been urgently suggesting to my immediate superior of the historic validity of retreat to get bigger guns. Richard Dreyfuss suggested a bigger boat in Jaws and after no one listened look what happened.

During their walk through the subway tunnels they encounter really large insect type things that we earlier saw dropping from the monster. Nowhere in the movie do they say these things are parasites of the monster but if you've seen some of the promotional material or the bonus stuff then you know this. Which is a fun thing of the movie, they don't bother to try to explain anything and leave it all to speculation. So, one of them is hurt but no one bothers to suggest leaving the tunnels to seek out a pharmacy to treat her wounds. They hide out in a small room deciding what they shall do while their friend starts bleeding to death. Eventually they leave and encounter soldiers. Soldiers start treating the poor girl but one of them notices the bite, screams at the top of her lungs that there is a bite which everyone in the vicinity apparently understands what this means even though we don't and then they drag her off to the side where she then explodes.

Parasite bite causes uncontrollable need to explode. Check.

Soldier lets them leave into dangerous city to rescue two-faced girl but doesn't offer any weapons at all. Which is another problem for me. Not once during this movie did anyone suggest that they should consider arming themselves. Giant monster with blood explosion causing parasites roaming through the city at will? Don't need a weapon for that. I'm not even talking a good bat or anything, not just firearms. They somehow manage to find a blunt instrument or an ax when they suddenly need one conveniently enough. But I think I would have suggested a weapon the first time I saw the parasite things running around on the TV eating fully armed soldiers.

But that's just me.

Anyway, they find the two-faced girl who has been impaled on steel rebar in her apartment. They pull her up off of it which according to Grey's Anatomy and common sense suggests is a really bad thing to do. She's hurt at first and favoring the shoulder but I swear within five minutes it's as if she forgot that she has a hole running through her body in her left shoulder that should cause her to bleed to death before the end of the movie.

So they go to the helicopters and one of them gets in one first but they're separated. We assume she lands elsewhere just fine. The others get on another helicopter and get to witness how some of the soldiers in this movie are far smarter than the ones in Godzilla. In Godzilla they send a few Apache attack helicopters to attack Godzilla. These pilots in FLYING aircraft follow the apparent Army guidelines that you must never, ever fly ABOVE the buildings. You must weave in and out of the buildings while chasing the monster because that's more exciting. In Cloverfield, the pilots do the smart thing, they bomb the hell out of the thing at several thousand feet.

Of course it does no good and the thing decides to randomly attack the helicopter our new friends are in which then crashes in Central Park. Everyone lives except for the two pilots for some reason. They start to run away but dufus goes back for the camera because he's documenting after all. Monster comes along and after years of speculation we are finally given an idea of what it's like to be eaten by a giant monster as the camera flops around inside the mouth until spat out onto the ground.

The last two survivors are the main guy and the two-faced girl he rescued, who at this point is showing absolutely no signs of her previous injury that almost killed her. The two get to profess their love for each other before the military gets serious and drops more bombs on the monster which happens to be nearby.

So, the movie is essentially the recovered tape from the camera that gives an idea of what happened that night. It's a good movie and I liked it just fine but I don't get the big hype behind it. They did a good job marketing the thing because everybody was hyped to see this thing with people analyzing the trailer frame by frame to try to figure out what it was about. The post-production is excellent because it turns out almost the entire thing was filmed on sound stages and the final product does not give that impression at all. It truly seemed like it was filmed on location for the most part.

Wrapping up, good movie. But one burning question I'm left with is...

Why is it called Cloverfield?