“Cloverfield” is a giant monster film but it’s also sadly a found footage film. The film came close to making me physically ill with is violent camera shaking and when it wasn’t making me sick, I was bored by its choice of narrative as it provides arguably the dullest way to showcase a monster attack.

“Cloverfield” opens with an insanely bland party for a guy by the name of Rob (Michael Stahl-David) but then disaster strikes and a band of people try to rescue one of their friends as a giant monster attacks New York. The army are there fighting but instead we only see glimpses of the big fight against the monster from the worst possible angles, depriving us of any enjoyment.

The characters in this film are bad even when considering the genre. Giant monster movies aren’t known for entertaining characters but the ones here are so painful that I found it hard to tolerate them. The worst is easily the cameraman called Hud (T.J. Miller “Deadpool”), who constantly says “I’m documenting” and it goes far beyond ridiculous. The monster may be interesting but we get such poor shots of it that I can’t really tell. It looked a little generic as it was very similar to many other American giant monster films of the era such as “Super 8”.

Many see “Cloverfield” as a clever way of making a monster film by only providing you with limited shots of the monster and a narrative that deviates from most giant monster films. However, I find it more irritating and severely underwhelming. I think “Cloverfield” is one of the worst movie experiences I’ve had because it denies you the chance to see a film where a monster attacks a city through its style. The reason why films such as “King Kong” and “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” work so well is because you can see the monster.