To sum it up: shakey camera action to cover up the lack of a strong story line, with pathetically long character development and an ending that really reminds me of the Fellowship of the Ring: the damned thing still isn’t over. Spoilers ahead.

In fact I’d almost draw complete parallels with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Though I must admit that I thought Cloverfield grinded along more than the Fellowship but it at least had the advantage that you knew there were two more movies to come, that they had to stop it somewhere and they even did a better way. I’d almost rate the action in Cloverfield as on par as the Fellowship as well, unless you count the people hiding and things randomly exploding as action (the scene from where they go up to the room to when they go down to the alley way was just people running and screaming isn’t action in my opinion its just people running and screaming). So heres the basic layout of the movie:
1) Introduce the characters in a tremendously long party scene complete with a bit of stupid drama. Intersperse this with a long forgotten day with what I guess are two main protagonists, this guy and some chick he has been friends with for a long time and they really deeply love each other but never really let it show blah blah blah (Start of the Fellowship in the Shire)
2) Things exploding, people running and screaming, hiding somewhere for a short while before moving again (this time not really running) (the Shire escape through the forest perhaps, with the fight at Weathertop (iirc))
3) Their bridge and way out of the city gets taken out and the guy gets the call from the girl saying she is trapped come save me (Rivendell)
4) They go forth to save said girl and end up in the middle of a large fight with the monster and the army and end up in the subway (Moria!) and then end up being chased by monsters in said Subway (still Moria) before coming out into the light and into friendly company (barely Lothlorien/Caras Galadhon).
5) They end up running again and recover the girl (no match to Fellowship here) and start running back for their evacuation (back to the fellowship, except trade boats with choppers) and the monster knocks the chopper down and it crashes (the falls)
6) Big scary monster attacks them and kills one of them (poor Boromir) and the guy and his girl escape from this and hide under a bridge

Someone said it should finished at the point where the chopper crashes, I’d tend to go with that sentiment. There is one more part where they basically nuke manhattan (I’m guessing). During the credit it goes “help us” and “its still alive” so I guess the guy is edging for a sequel. However the worst thing for me was that the damned camera never stopped moving during the entire movie and was smack bang in the centre of the theatre (not as bad as up near the front) which caused me to be sick between 3 and 4 (I’m told all I missed was the monster appearing for a short while) because I’d eaten a bit too much popcorn before hand (that I had been overcharged for as well). That and the general feeling of the audience when the credits started was: what, that is it? It’s over? Just a deathly air of silence. This is tied with the last time I went to the movies to see The Golden Compass (was really looking forward to that movie and enjoyed it) and ended up having parts of it ruined by a baby crying and people talking to their children.

I think next time I’ll pirate the damn thing, not get over charged on top of the already rip off price for popcorn and some coke to watch some crappy movie that I can’t pause when I need to go to the toilet because the damned director decided to make up for the defects in the story by continuously shaking the camera. When I wasn’t feeling sick or nausea, I was bored and and at no point was I scared (perhaps because the camera kept moving I couldn’t be scared and when the camera wasn’t moving that much I was either waiting for something to happen or nothing exciting happened). The problem with the scheme as it exists today is that the shit movies still get box office ratings and money whilst being of poor quality. People can only stand being ripped off so much before they sick of it.