This isn't Godzilla cartoonishly chomping the heads off random citizens.

Perhaps the reviewer is unfamiliar with the firebombings that Tokyo endured, and has never seen the original, Burr-less Gojira. I'm not saying that this movie is on such a scale, but there is some resonance there.

Salonians all try and act like they are peer reviewers on some scholarly journal, attaching the reviewer as often as the ideas brought up in the review. Please, speaking directly to the author is not needed and does little to improve a forum. It just makes you look like a self-important jerk. If you want to be a creative writing professor, please, undergo the decades of wasted time and frustration that one must put into the profession.

I actually really like horror movies. This isn't about liking or not liking horror movies. This isn't a matter of being afraid of seeing "Cloverfield" - except perhaps the fear of wasting two hours and eleven bucks seeing a movie that promises to be not very good. When I referred to a post-traumatic stress disorder, I was obviously using hyperbole. Let's face it, if you made the decision to stay in New York City after 9/11, you've pretty much already faced any fear you might have of dying in another terrorist attack. You've said to yourself "I'd rather run the risk of dying in a terrorist attack than live someplace safer." And I should note that by and large New Yorkers have not been particularly susceptible to the politics of fear that Bush/Cheney have been exploiting for the past seven years. But what's the big deal about thinking that "Cloverfield" is a bit tacky as a evocation of 9/11? Isn't it my right to think so? Isn't that one of the rights our soldiers are fighting in Iraq to preserve?

Take your insufferably precious thin skin to Brie Nibbler Island.

By using my post (but not actually paying attention to it) as an excuse to build yourself up as a "thinking feeling human being" yada yada (aka sanctimonious high groung), you basically prove one of my points.

Posting anonymously, you prove the other.

Stephanie, is that you? LOL!

"Cloverfield" may be tacky, but since when is tacky worth fussing about? Tacky is usually more risible than arousing, and many folks here seem incensed at this movie's very existence.

As other posters have pointed out, the 1954 "Gojira" had pretty much the same idea: A monster from the Id -- with radioactive breath -- attacks a country that had not so long before suffered horrific, almost incomprehensible attacks.

Ishiro Honda (flashing my nerd flag) reportedly based it on an incident when a Japanese fishing vessel wandered too close to a U.S. nuclear test, but it's pretty clear that post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki, anything U.S. and nuclear would be seen as a bad bet in Japan.

Tacky? Sounds like it. Immensely popular? Yep. The monster-movie version of fears of fallout? Probably, yeah.

To burrow back to the point: Stories like this derive from attempts to deal with, not necessarily exploit, fear.

Mary Shelley's "Modern Prometheus" stole life from the gods. At the time of writing, electricity and chemistry were new studies; Shelley tossed in a little old-time alchemy and came up with a new monster. People fear the unknown -- what hath science wrought? -- more than the known.

"Cloverfield" has done at least one thing undeniably right: Its marketing hasn't shown the monster, so anyone watching the trailer is left swimming in the murky subconscious. Is it a 90-foot-tall Osama? More likely his stand-in, a CGI reptile with Aliens-like jaws. Or whatever.

The point is, art (and yeah, filmmaking, even monster-movie filmmaking, is an art form; a thing doesn't become art by virtue of quality) sometimes disturbs. Or maybe a better word is provoked. A lot of people reading this review obviously feel provoked.

Not everybody enjoys stirring up darker feelings; perfectly understandable. I'm not trying to disregard or dismiss anyone's feelings.

But some of us like to dig into that ugly stuff, in a digestible, safe way; agitation can bring things to light that might otherwise have festered down below.

Seems to me that this movie is an expensive American knock-off of last year's wonderful low budget Korean flick "The Host" - I can hear the meeting now... "Let's make the charming and sympathetic Korean family who personally fight and finally, sustaining heartbreaking losses defeat the sea monster and make them American yuppies - that way it's more fun to put them through all this schlocky terror. And obviously we do it in New York cause we can tap into the whole 9/11 thing. Just like Godzilla and Tokyo after the bomb!" High fives ensued all around...

You had a point?

Really?

I'm sorry that I referred to myself as a thinking and feeling human being. Apparently this is an unforgivable sin of self-aggrandizement.

You win!

This review contains several misstatements. I don't have time to list them all, but for instance -- There is no point in the film at which it is not ENTIRELY clear who is holding the camera. It only changes hands once near the end, and it's very obvious when it does. Two, there is PLENTY of suspense, of the same kind as you would see in ANY disaster film, and when they're in buildings, there's plenty of the monster-movie type suspense as well. Thirdly -- Does EVERY film with a disaster in it that takes place in Manhattan HAVE to be compared to 9-11 now??? GET OVER IT. I HAVE and I WAS THERE. Let's move on people, instead of choosing the most blunt and obvious analogy every time, shall we?

See the film for yourself, folks. It may not QUITE live up to the hype, but it's certainly a good deal better than this pittance of a review indicates. It also has among the most realistic production design I've ever seen in a movie, and the effects are nearly flawless. If you liked the xeno-ecology of last year's The Mist, you'll love the creature work in this film too.

In closing, this was a very silly review.