There was a thread about this when it was first heard of. I talked about it after I saw the Transformers movie. Noone really cared and never talked about it. I think it got too much hype too early.
I like a good genre movie, but the wobbly camcorder style shown off in the latest trailer is a serious mis-step. I don't think I'm all that interested in watching a sci-fi/horror/disaster/whatever it is movie when the special effects will be obsured by low quality replay and constantly handheld shaking. I can understand the interest in making an extraordinary event "real", but that's not the way to do it.
The film has a budget of less than 30m USD, so there isn't much in the way of impressive effects to obscure in the first place. I bet you the total amount of time the "monster" is on screen is less than ten minutes.
OK, I'm really feeling the hate in the room. Personally I think it has potential. As for the budget, if you're actors are a bunch of nobodies, then 30 mil can probably buy you some decent VFX. When the film is released and it blows real hard, you can all say I told you so, but for now I remain hopeful. It looks to me like the movie I wanted 'War Of The Worlds' to be, although a Victorian version set to the music of Jeff Wayne would have been far superior!
I accept that none of the elements are particularly innovative, but it is fast-paced and enjoyable. I couldn't care less about monsters so found it quite convenient for the monster to only be seen in glances. Yes, the idea of capturing the whole experience on camcorder is implausible, but is it more implausible than such a monster existing?! I don't think so. The new footage being recorded over the old footage worked well for me. It was also a good move to use (almost) unknown actors - more expensive ones would have had no purpose other than as a box-office draw.
It was a working title for the film during production, designed to give nothing away (other titles included, bizarrely, 'Cheese' and 'Chocolate'). When it came to settling on the title later, they went with 'Cloverfield' because it sounded like it could conceiveably be the name of a government experiment and they couldn't think of anything better. The director also liked the incongruity of the name versus this big all-destroying creature.
And the origin of the name 'Cloverfield' in the first place? It's the name of a boulevard near Bad Robot's production office.
Anyone else stick around for the post-credits sound-bite?