“Now that the fanboy hype has cleared, we can see ‘Cloverfield’ for what it is: borrowed inspiration, trite screenwriting and amateurish acting all in the service of a ballsy idea — that a horror movie could maybe, just maybe, have a soul. As it turns out, ‘Cloverfield’ virtues are all mechanical, but, hot damn, what it might have been,” write Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers in one of the first non major kool-aid drinking reviews from someone – and this is key – who is not an over-zealous movie “blogger” (a wretched bunch if there ever was one).
The film currently has a 52% rating over at Metatcritic and it appears that producers for the film screened the movie at the last possible minute for reviewers so any negative counter-hype would hit last minute. The trained seal online fans blogosphere has gone wild for this thing, blindly dickriding it hard in eager anticipation of a “kick-ass” experience.
Even the L.A. Times is complicit, incredulously calling their annoyingly ubiquitous hide-n’-seek viral campaign, “subtle” and “under the radar.”
Slate says, “despite a first reel entirely devoted to establishing characters, Cloverfield is basically a line-’em-up, pick-’em-off horror movie that’s effective without being either viscerally frightening or emotionally moving.”
