Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 77% (Critics) / 67% (Audience)
Directed By: Matt Reeves
Written By: Drew Goddard
Starring: Mike Vogel, Jessica Lucas and Lizzy Caplan
Studio: Paramount

Synopsis: Alien monsters attack New York told through the viewpoint of four friends on a quest to rescue one of their girlfriends while avoiding the carnage all around them.

The Good:
Well, the idea behind this movie was a really cool one and if memory serves they had some really inventive marketing initiatives in place during the lead up to the premiere of the movie that took full advantage of the high concept. There were also some awesome visuals peppered throughout the flick that still held up well while watching on my 60″ flat screen. And the monster (in design and implementation) was all sorts of kick ass.
Thankfully I also avoided the awful case of motion sickness I got from that damn constantly moving video camera while watching in the theater. At home the shaky-cam was no worse than an old episode of NYPD BLUE.

The Bad:
It would have been nice to know where the friggin’ monster came from or what its primary motivation was besides breaking stuff and killing people but I guess they’ll reserve that nugget of info for the much talked about sequel.

The Ugly:
The first 20 minutes of this movie was a how-to manual for performing torture through tedium. Every character in this movie sickened me with their vapidity so much that I rooted for their deaths from beginning to end. This is a major shouck because I expected more from Drew Goddard having been familiar with his ability to write compelling characters through the various Joss Whedon projects he has worked on.

Final Verdict:
CLOVERFIELD delivered in spades when it came to monsters on destructive rampages but it failed miserably in making me care one iota about the crew of friends trying to survive the monsters assault. B-