i couldn't disagree with you more. i felt this movie was absolutely fantastic. while i will admit, it's definitely not for everyone, i really feel like the whole of the movie was on screen. i don't think they were trying to send any message about how we as a culture deal with traumatic events, rather i think they wanted to make it look real. let people actually connect with it, and lose themselves in the movie, which i know i did.

if there is any statement made in this film, it's that it is possible to take any genre, including a genre of which i cannot think of one good movie to come out of, and make something spectacular.

let's say michael bay had taken on this same project. this would have been an epic US military vs whatever comes after us explosion-fest with absolutely no substance. what this movie did is focus on a specific group of people caught in the middle of the mayhem. you still get to see the military shooting it and the battle that goes on between them, but that's not the focus of it.

personally, i think this film is revolutionary and is one of the most original told story i can think of in a movie. sure, you could compare it to blair witch, but blair witch was just two hours of "look, we made a movie that's meant to look like a documentary." Cloverfield actually puts substance, characters the audience cares about, and they kept it intense through the whole thing.

i love movies. i watch as many as i can, and in today's market, movies (movies like this anyway) are driven completely on special effects. they lack depth, character, and most of the time story. i don't think i've been as sucked into a movie like i was with this one since i was 12 years old watching Jurassic Park.

sorry for the double post, but i forgot to mention the 9/11 connotation you've given it. is there some unwritten law stating it's not ok to make a disaster movie in New York? i won't pretend to say i was there on 9/11 or could imagine what it must have felt like, but the fact that some of the people who did experience 9/11 first-hand had to leave the movie tells me one thing, and it's not that they were trying to recreate it or play off of it in any way. it tells me this movie is actually realistic, and this is actually how people would probably act.