April 20, 2008
Cloverfield 
2008 / Matt Reeves > Effectively an extra-long episode of The O.C. with a monster in it, Cloverfield uses and abuses the amateur camera technique to a level where it's more annoying than satisfying. But the worst thing about the film may be that it tries to put the lives of people who we really could care less about above the story of the monster, which is a terrible, terrible waste of opportunity.
I disagree with you here... I don't think it tried to put the lives of the people above the monster necessarily. I don't think we were supposed to care about the people, really. There's no reason they would be presented as such horrible people. I think making them shallow and vapid made you "cheer" for the monster in a way. But primarily, I think the point of giving them more face time than the monster was so we could be part of the movie. Thus the shaky cam, the useless camera guy (Hud or whatever) and the focus on the monster from the ground.