What I think of CLOVERFIELD… (with spoilers—you’ll thank me if you haven’t seen it).

Considering Blu-rays are way too expensive, I always wait for them to come down in price before buying them—I no longer make the kinds of impulse buys I used to with less expensive DVDs. I miss the days of browsing through the once well-stocked horror section of Best Buy and coming home with a load of unheard of horror films, a practice that has left me with an extensive horror collection filled with some of the worst horror movies you’d ever want to love.

But when I had a 10 dollar coupon for Best Buy as well as a 10% off coupon, and Cloverfield had dropped in price, I picked it up at last. For the record, Quarantine is, as of now, my absolute favorite film in the found footage genre (with competition like The Blair Witch Project, how couldn’t it be?). But I had high hopes for Cloverfield based on what I’d seen in the trailers.

In terms of presenting a monster-wreaks-havoc-on-big-city film in documentary style, the movie is definitely entertaining. The monster is awesome, and the added device of having it drop off these nasty little spider-like critters is a bonus, and reminded me of many a horror/sci-fi video game I’ve played. Unfortunately, the film suffers from the same problem as all found footage films. Any human being in the given situation would drop the fucking camera and run after the very first body parts came flying past the camera lens! At least Quarantine explained away the cameraman’s dedication to his filming with it being his job and the reporter’s job to “get the story.”

In Cloverfield, we simply have some dude who was filming a going away party in a Manhattan apartment running around watching through the lens of his camera as a giant beast from hell destroys skyscrapers a block away, his friends are slaughtered on the street, and spider critters pounce on he and his friends while they are trying to escape through the dark tunnels of the New York City subway system. Yeah. Keeping the camera in hand would be my FIRST priority in all these instances.

But that’s not the only problem. The “hero” of the film decides he is going to trek into midtown—directly toward the giant monster and the army’s rocket launchers—to rescue the chick he has recently broken up with. And of course—his cameraman friend and two females decide they are going to go with him instead of evacuating New York City like everyone else. By the point in the film when they reach this chick’s apartment building…which is now leaning on the building beside it because it’s been knocked over…I was pretty much laughing at every move they made and every asinine decision. It only gets better (aka: worse) when the monster makes a picnic out of the cameraman in Central Park, and, instead of RUNNING away from the towering beast, his friends go back to check on his remains and—of course—pick up the camera to continue filming!

If you can score a 10 dollar coupon and 10% off coupon for Best Buy, at this point I think you’d get a couple of dollars back on a purchase of the Blu-ray. It’s worth it.