Monstrous (promotional title)

To cap a week spent discussing mostly Cloverfield and rip-offery, a week-ending post combining the two: the Cloverfield clone from The Asylum, entitled Monster. While I have little admiration for their general concept, I was impressed enough by Cloverfield having to do much of its shooting between its July 3rd trailer premiere and committed January 18th release date under intense scrutiny; Asylum had to scramble the jets to start throwing together their own version as soon the summer hype started (poor screenwriters, having to work on July 4th) and still be able to beat Cloverfield's release date by three days.

The Asylum entrusted directorial duties to Eric Forsberg, their go-to guy for all things tentacular: he'd previously scripted last year's 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea, during which I can only assume there's a doozy of a squid scene.

Monster is about two young female American filmmakers in Tokyo to interview an environmentalist when an apparent earthquake hits. They happen to catch some monstrous post-quake hijinks with the shakiest of cams, which seem to consist of a lot of large tentacles waving wildly in front of high-rises and in the general direction of military aircraft (up). The trailer is as close to the Cloverfield trailer as you could imagine; The Asylum simply can't make a movie look like I Am Legend, but they may have experienced their most skillful moment here. While Cloverfield's capable cinematographer Michael Bonvillain does his best to frame shots carefully enough to catch all the carefully planted visual cues, he still has to emulate uncertain, unprofessional, amateur videography. The Asylum's got the genuine article.