- essentially taking the faux-doc subgenre that The Blair Witch Project pioneered and making its subject a monster comparable to Godzilla or the more recent The Host, dir. Matt Reeves and pen Drew Goddard think up and bring to life a hell of a concept
- the monster is effectively scary and realistic. the film's best and worst attributes largely relate to its medium, though. on one hand, pic's dedication to viewers watching a REAL videotape of the destruction is admirable in its switching between monster footage and interaction between the two leads who love each other shot a month before. however, flaws are revealed here as well. during the film, there are several occasions where scenes have obviously been edited together. it uses a good number of Rope tricks to appear continuous but there are still many unexplained stops and starts. and i wasn't looking for them through, hoping to report on it
- is engaging in its entirety, with a running time that is smart enough not to overstay its welcome
- unfortunately, the most sympathetic character in the film is....well, no one. for all the time and professionalism put into the special effects, a rewrite of the actual characters and dialogue could have made the picture absolutely epic. there's an arguably daring choice to make the camera holder a socially awkward character...but he's just annoying and rarely funny. the central love story pulls no emotional strings for me as I was only given about a two minute intro to get to know them and judging by everything afterwards, they aren't very interesting. in essence, i enjoyed the ride, just not who I was sitting next to throughout
6.5/creative, contrived monster movie
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