User reviews

The entire movie is two young women, attractive but nothing special, with rather flat and uninteresting personalities running around Tokyo during some kind of giant octopus attack. The special effects are not very special, the monster is never really seen other than partial glimpses, there is zero in the way of plot intrigue and plenty of annoying focus on the two characters. They cry. They get their faces dirty. They crawl around in the caves. They run the camera but it's hard to understand some of the shots since nobody is holding or controlling the camera.

This goes on and on. And on. And on. What were they thinking? Then, as if this vacuous mess were insufficiently annoying, every 30 seconds or so the "damaged film" effects kick in, disrupting the continuity and interfering with what little actual "action" there is in the film.

Actually making it through this movie is an exercise in futility. You keep hoping it will either get better or end. I'm about 20 minutes from the finish as I am writing this. It sounds like there is a battle going on but you can't see anything -- another "damaged film" special.

Yikes. Don't bother. Do yourself a favor and just don't bother.

If there is a thousand ways to disrupt a video feed in order to make it look like it's been badly damaged, these girls have now found 1200 ways. The cutting of the video feed had a purpose, I know that, but it was an annoying feature in this film. It almost made me go crazy, but I stuck with it just to see the rest and be able to give this film a fair judgment. The film (idea) itself is not bad at all. The acting has one or maybe two decent moments (although Erin is kinda cute (when she's not sobbing)). The script is just wonderful. It had the potential of being a new Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast The War of the Worlds, but unfortunately it just had the intention, but not the drive to actually make it. But honestly I think you should spend your 90 minutes on collecting navel lint instead. In the long run it'll do you much more good than watching this. I watched it - so you wont have to.

Okay maybe this is not a rip-off of Cloverfield, and maybe I should not have watched it a few days after said movie. But still, Monster is almost exactly the same with chicks (you could sell anything with chicks, right?), without a decent plot, acting, and sadly, without a monster.

We get two girls who are in Japan to make a documentary, when Tokyo is hit by an earthquake. And this is when the movie starts to get irreversibly bad and annoying. Because the two girls, however cute they may be, just cannot seem to use the camera. In the middle of a monster attack, *everything* is filmed, except for what is actually happening. When our heroines are staring with their jaws dropped at something supposedly terrible, the camera is well... showing them, their jaws dropped, staring. Then cut, or artifacts on the film (at every 5 seconds, or when something interesting is about to happen), and we go to the next scene. Rinse and repeat. In the end, we are given 90 minutes of artifacts, girls being scared and talking nonsense, running somewhere (filming each other's legs in the process), and just hanging out in Tokyo, obviously afraid of some tentacle monster that they always fail to capture with the camera.

Besides of not being able to make a point (it is hard when you point the camera at your sister instead of at whatever is happening around you), the movie fails to convey a sense of plot. We know where the girls are trying to go, but we just do not care if they ever get there, or what happens if they do. There is simply no drama, no excitement, mostly due to the bad use of camera, and the long talky scenes, and short scary ones (usually cut by artifacts, or simply, darkness).

I can't help but to compare this movie to Cloverfield, where you got a monster, and after some time, you actually got interested in where the group is going, and in the end, you cared. Monster could have been a great movie, even without showing the monster, if it manages to make you feel for the girls, but it sadly fails. It is not simply bad, but also an uninteresting movie.

Giving "Monster" a one star "awful" rating is wayyyyy too high. Without question this is the worst film I have ever seen. The tone was set with the first 5 minutes when the office of the Japanese Minister was smaller than my closet and the exact same sound effect was used 4 times outside the Ministry of the Interior Building.

The camera work was MUCH worse than Cloverfield and Blair Witch, mostly because even when stationery the objects on the screen were a conglomeration of the floor, the speakers legs, her breasts and mindless panning of the walls.

The plot was utter aimless with dialog to match - the inane banter was devoid of emotion and at the "scariest" moments the two wooden actresses sounded like Ben Stein lecturing on the economy! There wandering around the destroyed city was pointless to the story and lines like "it looks like it's going to be a beautiful morning" while overlooking the fake destruction made one want to throw a shoe at the TV screen.

The best way to describe this "movie" is Pointless waste of film! Another "Cloverfield" did not need to be made and this was a poor attempt at it anyway!

SOMEONE PLEASE!!!! TAKE THEIR CAMERA AWAY!

I saw this movie, while looking for something to watch. I saw "monster" and Japan. Having been a fan of Japanese monster movies way before the average American had even been born. I thought what can possibly go wrong, after all they were so bad that there were good fun: 1) the two "actresses"; 2) a great example of the term "the Ugly American". An "ancient" book by the title, about how rude, impolite, and self absorbed, Americans could be while abroad. Add to that how ridiculous those two women were: "we have permission to film", really? Regular people who didn't want to be filmed. Didn't wait to see the monster.

If I had seen this before Cloverfield, I would have had a better impression. But it is just a knockoff. If Cloverfield is "Blair Witch Godzilla" this is "Blair Witch Calamari".. And I don't like Calamari. Frankly I thought I was going to be sick from the camera work. "Camera Effects/Artifacts" were poorly placed. When the camera was still the "effects" were at the highest. When they were running they were at their lowest. I guess all that knocking around kept the camera working..LOL I liked the actors, kept the screaming to minimum. Only one part where the acting look forced. But my overall impression is still low.

You've probably all figured out by now that this is the straight-to-video knock-off of the much anticipated "Cloverfield". I was pretty curious about this, partly because it comes from The Asylum (their stuff is just addictively bad!) and because the trailer for it looked nearly competent. So naturally I rented it as soon as I had the chance.

The plot (ha!) concerns two women, a documentary crew, who fly to Tokyo to interview an official about global warming. Everything in the movie is filmed vacation-video style from the girls' hand-held camera (just like "Cloverfield"). During the interview the monster attacks and the city becomes a disaster area. Our heroes are forced to run for cover and try to find people who speak English while still documenting the monster's rampage.

I expected weak CGI effects and bad dialogue, but I was also disappointed to find that the hand-held camera wasn't hand-held looking at all (the making-of feature on the DVD betrayed their real techniques) and the down-time that fills out most of the movie happens in spots that look more like L.A. than Tokyo. Transitions are accomplished with unconvincing video distortion, an attempt to sell us on the gimmick that we are watching found footage. There's an attempt at explanation for the monster too, which was perhaps the worst aspect of this mess.

"Monster" may be The Asylum's worst. In spite of a good trailer, this will be forgotten especially because they chose a title already used for a Charlize Theron movie. "Cloverfield" has nothing to fear from this.

This time around, The Asylum decided to rip off "Cloverfield". There is one positive thing I can say about this movie, and that it employs a lot of Asian actors, a minority that just about all Hollywood movies do not use. Aside from that, I can't think of anything else that is good about this movie. The movie is obviously not filmed in Japan, just using occasional stock footage of Tokyo in an effort to fool the audience. The sound is awful - there were large sections of the movie where I simply could not understand what the characters were saying. The visual look of the movie is equally bad, clearly shot with a low-rent digital video camera. The direction is horrible, with some things like characters in the background walking casually when the city is being terrorized by the monster. There is far, FAR too much talk, when a movie like this needs plenty of adventure and special effects. (The limited special effects are pretty cheesy, and never gives us a good look at the title creature.) And there is no real ending to this movie - the last scene ends in a way that makes you think the director said, "Okay, we've got enough footage to make this movie 85 minutes long if you count the slow-moving end credits!" The writer/director, as of this date, has only this movie on his resume. No wonder.

I've not seen much in the way of positives posted about this movie. I'm going to stand alone in total disagreement and say that, for an asylum flick, it is honest, well thought out and comes across as a labour of love from all concerned. I very much enjoyed it.

The two leads, Erin Evans and Sarah Lieving, did a most creditable job of portraying a pair of sisters who were amateur film makers, in their deportment, voice tone, and physical reactions to the storyline. Miss Evans especially did a fine job of portraying believable despair, and her simple attractiveness made her a protagonist worth pulling for. The dialogue throughout was consistently appropriate. In my opinion, the girls were solid actors portraying amateurs, and did it well. I've seen lots worse, especially in this genre. Director Erik Estenberg paced the action well, and was skilled enough to pull of a pretty fair Tokyo, filming in LA. Not bad.

Action sequences were believable, and sometimes excellent within the budget constraints. The bombing scenes were especially effective, and the limiting of the monster to a few tentacles here and there and just one major showing, veiled by darkness, was appreciated. Thumbs up here.

Flaws? Oh, sure. Mr. Estenberg could have chopped about 8 to 10 minutes off the film to tighten up the drama, and some of the survival decisions made by the characters were, shall we say suicidal and stretched credibility a tad. Not really a Cloverfield ripoff, I would say it is more like another movie in the same vein, not as well done but certainly watchable. But I'd like to counter the negative with some positives and hope a few of you reading this will give "Monster" a fair shot.

And I would also hope to see the two leading ladies and director in other endeavours - the talent in this trio was evident, and makes the film click. I'll watch it again with no hesitation.

The title of this movie was the scariest thing about it. Not only was the acting HORRIBLY atrocious; the script, effects, and everything made me want to kill myself! Never mind the fact that the script was both insulting to the Japanese culture, but also made Americans look like absolute brainless wonders of nature. Thank God there was a reasonably attractive heroin in the story (if you can call it that) - but even she killed it the first time her and her sister had to "pretend" to be in a Monster attacked Tokyo; simply awful. Maybe they should try singing for American Idol instead. Intensive acting school is indeed of great need for these would be starlets - as well as many-many lessons in captivating screen writing. (5 burned-out stars, is how I would rate this "monstrous" failure.)

It starts out OK and has a decent premise to it. But after about the first 15 minutes it turns into a complete waste of time and do not waste your time by watching this.

Sisters Sarah and Erin hop the bigger pond, landing in Tokyo to film a documentary about global warming (though God knows why). In the midst of their interview with the Environmental Minister, havoc strikes. At first, it's assumed to be another earthquake. When military presence intensifies, terrorism is suspected. But all too soon, it's revealed to be...something else. Sounds a bit familiar, no? Just to get it out of the way, whether or not it's an unhappy accident of conflicting release dates, there's no getting around that this is "Cloverfield"-lite, with a few (very few) deviations. This is evident--from the distant explosion that marks the start of the action, to the overall concept, to splattering the camera with blood at least once. The monsters even roar as if they were separated at birth. To be fair, this film does have a few things on Cloverfield. The fish-out-of-water angle, namely placing the protagonists in an unfamiliar culture, was a great idea. It's difficult enough to survive disaster when most everyone speaks your language, but when they don't, the challenge is increased quite a bit. While the presentation of the global warming message is..."crunchy" at best, the not-so-subtle hint that global warming itself awakened the creature is another juicy notion. Honestly, there's no better place on earth to set your disaster than Tokyo, the world's capital of disasters! The biggest thing for me personally would have to be the logic of the beast itself. In this film, it seemed to cut its paths of destruction through heavily populated areas, as I believe an angry beast would, rather than conveniently following four scrawny twenty-somethings around, and even directly snacking on one of them, as New York's monster did.

Now that that's out of the way, even if Cloverfield never existed, this would still be pretty poor. The creature, a giant squid presumably, isn't actually seen doing very much to constitute a threat. Perhaps it could have actually picked up someone or smashed something, but all we're treated to is many angles of large, waving tentacles. One thing it makes you appreciate is how difficult disaster is to write. It seems that it's very easy to get so wrapped up in the turmoil of your story that you forget how people actually talk, particularly in the midst of emergency. Sarah and Erin (their actual first names, by the way; a bright-and-shining sign of non-actors) appear to struggle on the initiative to keep many of David Michael Latt's throw-away lines out of the production, but enough of them sneak in to become distracting. "I feel like we were meant to be here...", "It's so important to document this..." Sure. I realize they would have to invent reasons for our heroines to lug around an industrial-grade camera, but there must have been another way. Call me shallow, but I believe I'd find it difficult to think of what progeny will see someday when flaming debris is exploding all around me, and the street is caving in underneath my feet.

An additional note about the cast--in truth, considering the script, there's really no reason to have anyone American in it. The Japanese actors (and their characters) are FAR better than the American ones; particularly the high-schooler who lives with her half-crazed dad (and dad seems to know something of the angry creature) and the young doctor who just wants to get across town and make sure his son is okay. I wished the film were about THEM, or someone like them. Were I in Erik Estenberg and company's shoes, I'm sure I would have shot the entire thing with an entirely Japanese cast and subtitles. Couldn't the Japanese document their own disasters? They've had lots of practice.

So, maybe it's not so much a ripoff as it is just not good. Of course, consider that trailer for another Asylum treat, "AVH". As in, "Alien Vs. Hunter". As in intergalactic hunters with advanced camouflage fighting slimy aliens with elongated heads and teeth. Can't wait for that one, can ya? What? You've seen it? Of course you have...

MONSTER www.Theasylum.cc with Sarah Lieving Okay, Lets get over the CLOVERFIELD connection, Move on nothing to see here. Got into the rhythm of MONSTER , By thinking it was like that BIGFOOT footage that has made the rounds. Makes one feel you are there and therefore its as real as your mind would allow.

Even the credits are done as if a REAL documentary, That's a stretch that may / may not pay off.

Lots of plugs for YOUTUBE, Guess this counts as another one. So, How did the camera battery last for 90 minutes let alone the days they supposedly filmed ? Great cover art and the few, Very few scenes of creature. The leads were really good, Considering they had to carry the films as Scared Talking Heads. Its funny to think most of it was actually filmed in Japan, Money could have been used to show the MONSTER some more.

I watched this because it was on Netflix and I was bored. The synopsis given by Netflix seemed decent, so I gave it a shot. The movie was just unwatchable. It was boring the entire way through and the acting is beyond terrible.

It is seriously a movie about two women (in their late 20's?) who run around with the worlds worst camera. The movie uses the normal mockumentry features of the camera being shaky and some video being garbled...but this film overdoes it. The camera seems to go black, freeze footage, have pixilation, almost the entire way through. It is as though the filmmakers believed that video cameras in 2003 were not good for anything more than a paperweight.

The film has numerous factual errors in it that could have been avoided with 5 seconds of research. My favorite is the characters referring to uploading the video to "Youtube" despite youtube not being founded when the movie was supposed to be taking place.

The film starts bad, stays bad, and ends bad. There is nothing in it that gets "better" no matter how hopeful you try to be.

Perhaps one of you, eloquent commentators, could explain how "Monster" (on the market since January 18, 2008) can be a knockoff of "Cloverfield" (on the screen since January 16, 2008)? A great show of clairvoyance or a masterpiece of film-making and marketing? There are quite a few flaws in the movie (like why the recording on the first cassettes was OK and the distorted picture/sound effects appear at the same time the monster does - if the cassettes were found later together, damaged), but they are their own flaws. Oh, and stop wondering how one camera battery could hold for so long - the girls had a few batteries, as they indicate themselves at one point.

Even bored on a rainy Sunday afternoon I could not cope with watching this. It's another "found footage" film, which in itself is not necessarily a bad thing - some of them can be good. This, however, was in my opinion unwatchable. A large amount of the run time had nothing discernible on screen thanks to the massive amount of camera-waggle and low light etc. I know some degree of this is part of the genre but in this it was far too much. Unless it was a dull (and often repetitive) piece to camera by one of the 2 main characters you could barely see anything and the waggling camera is enough to make you feel sick. This is one of those low budget films where almost nothing happens, when it does you don't see much (it's basically a monster movie with almost no monster at all) and it felt like a total waste of my time. I've thrown this away because I would feel guilty if someone else ended up paying any money for it and wasting 90 minutes of their life on it. It truly is awful.

A poor remake of Cloverfield. A giant squid attacks Tokyo and two stupid girls can't seem to get away from it. The bouncing camera work will make you nauseous. Terrible..

I never have high expectations for an Asylum release, and a lot of their productions are fun in a "so bad it's good sort of way." Not this one though. This is bad even by Asylum standards.

Found footage is hard to do because there's the trap of, why are you still holding a camera? In this one, one of the protagonists just keeps repeating, "It's important to document all of this!" Meanwhile, any sane person would drop the camera and run for their life.

Basically, this is a poorly executed ripoff of "Cloverfield," but with almost no actual monster action in a film that has "Monster" as the title. We see some tentacles waving around occasionally, but that's about it. A lot of fake "damaged footage" and cuts to black, and so many cuts that the movie just gets annoying.

Skip this one and watch "Cloverfield" instead.

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Probably could have been interesting, but the filmmakers seem to put ALL their efforts into making the film seem "real", rather than making more of an effort to make it ENTERTAINING !!

YES, WE GET IT........the film is REALLY supposed to look like it was all shot by the two women actors playing the two main roles.....but there comes a point when you HAVE to realize that LESS is MORE......and STOP with all the 'jump cuts', edits, "interference", bad (filming) angles, and 'stop and start' filming in order to CONSTANTLY keep reminding your audience of just how "real" it all is, and simply just TELL THE STORY.

Somewhat similar, in a way, to the film that REALLY started all the more recent "first person perspective" films, The Blair Witch Project (1999). Yes, that film too could be VERY annoying with all the "real" film shots that comprised the movie, but until I saw this film, I didn't really realize how COMPLETELY overboard you can go on trying to make your first person perspective film seem "real", and thus, end up taking away almost ALL of the "entertainment" value it might have to offer, by making it hard to actually sit through and watch.

Oddly, it now makes me want to go back to watch Blair Witch again, to see just how much better (or worse) it was in terms of their use of all the "real" shots that ended up in that film.

On the plus side, the two female leads are very attractive women, so if one DOES have to sit through this thing, at LEAST there's that.....though, sadly, in the end, turns out that is just NOT enough of a reason to EVER see it......

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