Monster

Giving "Monster" a one star "awful" rating is wayyyyy too high. Without question this is the worst film I have ever seen. The tone was set with the first 5 minutes when the office of the Japanese Minister was smaller than my closet and the exact same sound effect was used 4 times outside the Ministry of the Interior Building.

The camera work was MUCH worse than Cloverfield and Blair Witch, mostly because even when stationery the objects on the screen were a conglomeration of the floor, the speakers legs, her breasts and mindless panning of the walls.

The plot was utter aimless with dialog to match - the inane banter was devoid of emotion and at the "scariest" moments the two wooden actresses sounded like Ben Stein lecturing on the economy! There wandering around the destroyed city was pointless to the story and lines like "it looks like it's going to be a beautiful morning" while overlooking the fake destruction made one want to throw a shoe at the TV screen.

The best way to describe this "movie" is Pointless waste of film! Another "Cloverfield" did not need to be made and this was a poor attempt at it anyway!

SOMEONE PLEASE!!!! TAKE THEIR CAMERA AWAY!

This time around, The Asylum decided to rip off "Cloverfield". There is one positive thing I can say about this movie, and that it employs a lot of Asian actors, a minority that just about all Hollywood movies do not use. Aside from that, I can't think of anything else that is good about this movie. The movie is obviously not filmed in Japan, just using occasional stock footage of Tokyo in an effort to fool the audience. The sound is awful - there were large sections of the movie where I simply could not understand what the characters were saying. The visual look of the movie is equally bad, clearly shot with a low-rent digital video camera. The direction is horrible, with some things like characters in the background walking casually when the city is being terrorized by the monster. There is far, FAR too much talk, when a movie like this needs plenty of adventure and special effects. (The limited special effects are pretty cheesy, and never gives us a good look at the title creature.) And there is no real ending to this movie - the last scene ends in a way that makes you think the director said, "Okay, we've got enough footage to make this movie 85 minutes long if you count the slow-moving end credits!" The writer/director, as of this date, has only this movie on his resume. No wonder.

You've probably all figured out by now that this is the straight-to-video knock-off of the much anticipated "Cloverfield". I was pretty curious about this, partly because it comes from The Asylum (their stuff is just addictively bad!) and because the trailer for it looked nearly competent. So naturally I rented it as soon as I had the chance.

The plot (ha!) concerns two women, a documentary crew, who fly to Tokyo to interview an official about global warming. Everything in the movie is filmed vacation-video style from the girls' hand-held camera (just like "Cloverfield"). During the interview the monster attacks and the city becomes a disaster area. Our heroes are forced to run for cover and try to find people who speak English while still documenting the monster's rampage.

I expected weak CGI effects and bad dialogue, but I was also disappointed to find that the hand-held camera wasn't hand-held looking at all (the making-of feature on the DVD betrayed their real techniques) and the down-time that fills out most of the movie happens in spots that look more like L.A. than Tokyo. Transitions are accomplished with unconvincing video distortion, an attempt to sell us on the gimmick that we are watching found footage. There's an attempt at explanation for the monster too, which was perhaps the worst aspect of this mess.

"Monster" may be The Asylum's worst. In spite of a good trailer, this will be forgotten especially because they chose a title already used for a Charlize Theron movie. "Cloverfield" has nothing to fear from this.

The entire movie is two young women, attractive but nothing special, with rather flat and uninteresting personalities running around Tokyo during some kind of giant octopus attack. The special effects are not very special, the monster is never really seen other than partial glimpses, there is zero in the way of plot intrigue and plenty of annoying focus on the two characters. They cry. They get their faces dirty. They crawl around in the caves. They run the camera but it's hard to understand some of the shots since nobody is holding or controlling the camera.

This goes on and on. And on. And on. What were they thinking? Then, as if this vacuous mess were insufficiently annoying, every 30 seconds or so the "damaged film" effects kick in, disrupting the continuity and interfering with what little actual "action" there is in the film.

Actually making it through this movie is an exercise in futility. You keep hoping it will either get better or end. I'm about 20 minutes from the finish as I am writing this. It sounds like there is a battle going on but you can't see anything -- another "damaged film" special.

Yikes. Don't bother. Do yourself a favor and just don't bother.

If I had seen this before Cloverfield, I would have had a better impression. But it is just a knockoff. If Cloverfield is "Blair Witch Godzilla" this is "Blair Witch Calamari".. And I don't like Calamari. Frankly I thought I was going to be sick from the camera work. "Camera Effects/Artifacts" were poorly placed. When the camera was still the "effects" were at the highest. When they were running they were at their lowest. I guess all that knocking around kept the camera working..LOL I liked the actors, kept the screaming to minimum. Only one part where the acting look forced. But my overall impression is still low.