Five young New Yorkers throw their friend a going-away party the night that a monster the size of a skyscraper descends upon the city. Told from the point of view of their video camera, the film is a document of their attempt to survive the most surreal, horrifying event of their lives.

In 1999 there was a film that proved that great marketing can almost make a movie, or at least make it popular and earn a lot of money. The film managed to trick many into believing that the events seen on film were real and that were almost watching a historical reenactment. That film was the Blair Witch Project and had massive success and was quite revolutionary for its time but I hated the movie then and I still hate it now. Eight years later we return to the scene of the crime almost with Cloverfield, which has also been a marketing genius and uses a lot of the similar things that made Blair Witch famous. And just like Blair Witch, I might just again find myself on the outside looking in as while I did not hate the movie I really disliked it for the most part.

All the complaints that I had for Blair Witch are also true for Cloverfield. From the shaky hand held camera that after ninety minutes makes you want to throw up in your popcorn bucket to the fact that the movie has no real closure or shows any context to outside events. The entire story is told by the hand held camera, there are no outside influences, there are no answers to any of the questions that may plague you and in the end they don’t bother to tie up any of the loose ends or answer any of the thousand questions that must be plaguing you. I just can’t find myself liking a movie that is obviously trying to manipulate me.

Now I said I did not hate it but just really disliked it and there is a reason for that. That reason is that I am amazed and marveled by the effects work in this film. Unlike Blair Witch where they spend the entire movie running around a forest, in Cloverfield you glimpse monsters, buildings get blow up, missiles fly past your head and during it all you never lose that sense that this could be real. The effects are amazing and almost make up for an otherwise bad film. It’s just not enough the lack of story, the motion sickness and the lack of closure can’t be healed by effects nor can they be cured by marketing.

That brings up the question of how important marketing is and how it affects us as a movie going public. The people behind Blair Witch and Cloverfield are obvious marketing geniuses; you never know what’s real watching the teaser and trailers and have no idea what you about to get yourself in. Unlike marketing failures like Snakes on a Plane (the titles of the very movie gives everything away) Cloverfield manages to hype up the movie and make you anticipate it without really showing you anything. What is the monster, what is going on during the trailer left as many questions as the movie did itself? The problem is you have to separate yourself from the marketing, they got you there, they filled those seats but that doesn’t mean it is going to be a good movie. The anticipation was definitely more fun that the actual thing in this case.

I had a hard time finding any attachment to any of the characters in the film. The movie played out with almost horror like cliché of whacking the characters in succession and you are just waiting to see who will die next. They filled the cast with young pretty actors with very little on their resumes. The monsters almost felt more real than the characters at times and what drove them to head deeper into the madness is so unlikely that you find yourself becoming detached from the film. I am hearing rumors of a sequel already, maybe some explanations and answers to the film, lets just hope it won’t be as disappointing and sickening as Cloverfield was.

Grade: C-