10 Worst Opening Scenes In Otherwise Perfect Movies

J.J. Abrams' found footage, sci-fi/horror flick is best known, perhaps, for its mysterious marketing campaign, in which audiences spent the months leading up to the film's release wondering what the heck the movie was actually going to be about.

For my money, though, this movie - which was actually directed by Matt Reeves, with Abrams serving as producer - deserves a lot more credit as a slice of actual filmmaking. In fact, I'd say that Cloverfield - with its Godzilla-sized monster stalking the streets of New York - is an almost perfect exercise in the found footage genre. Almost.

It's the opening party scene that really does my head in as far as this film is concerned, unfortunately - one that drags on for an insufferable 20 minutes before the characters get to do anything interesting.

It's here we meet most of the people we'll follow when the sh*t hits the fan later on, as a guy named Rob gets a party thrown in his honour before he moves away. But we stick with everyone for far too long and it's hard to get invested in any of their stories because everyone's issues seem so ridiculous (major first world problems, this lot).

The intention here, according to the film's director, was to "establish a complex network of friends," but isn't fun to watch and it doesn't make you sympathetic towards any of the characters. In fact, it pretty much ensures that you're glad to be in the movie theatre, far away from a party with so many overtly hipster-ish characters milling about.