Before watching the movie:

This movie had so much hype when it came out that I couldn’t avoid learning that this is a story in found footage about a Kaiju style attack on New York from the perspective of the running screaming little people on the ground who know almost nothing. I know it was so popular that a franchise was quickly spun up, which had varying success in recapturing the response.

It just never appealed to me before as a monster movie, but the cultural impact of at least the marketing around this movie is undeniable. I think this was among the first times a mainstream media release used an Alternate Reality Game to build buzz, and it definitely caught attention. I think some people were let down by the high expectations from the hype train, so that was more reason for me not to bother at the time.

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