Cloverfield

Five young New Yorkers throw their friend a going-away party the night that a monster the size of a skyscraper descends upon the city. Told from the point of view of their video camera, the film is a document of their attempt to survive the most surreal, horrifying event of their lives.

It's unlikely a film has ever received such hype without anyone knowing for sure what it is about. We knew it was some sort of monster film. We know now is that it is a monster film for the Youtube generation.

Taking an unknown cast and a relatively low budget, Reeves and producer JJ Abrams, who inflicted the dreaded Lost on us, have reinvigorated the disaster movie genre with the simplest of premises. A giant monster attacks Manhattan and we get to view it through a handheld camera.

For the first hour it's exhilarating stuff, with a sickening sense of terror as we feel the full force of the monster's attack but only get to see glimpses of the best itself. It's slightly disappointing that the film's standout moment, the head of the Statue of Liberty is sent flying across a downtown street, was given away so cheaply in the trailer, but it retains a sense of confusion and helplessness as civilians are slaughtered by the indiscriminate nature of the attack. Then sadly, just after the army turn up in a breathtaking set piece it stops for breath and becomes fairly formulaic.

The characters are complete caricatures, that contain little in the way of depth, and the handheld camera starts to outstay its welcome as what worked so brilliantly at the start begins to grate. Still, it's unlikely you will have seen a film quite like Cloverfield before and for that reason alone it deserves your attention.

One of the first things a viewer notices about Cloverfield is that it doesn't play by ordinary storytelling rules, making this intriguing horror film as much a novelty as an event. Told from the vertiginous point-of-view of a camcorder-wielding group of friends, Cloverfield begins like a television soap opera about young Manhattanites coping with changes in their personal lives. Rob (Michael Stahl-David) is leaving New York to take an executive job at a company in Japan. At his goodbye party in a crowded loft, Rob?s brother Jason (Mike Vogel) hands a camcorder to best friend Hud (T.J. Miller), who proceeds to tape the proceedings over old footage of Rob?s ex-girlfriend, Beth (Odette Yustman)--images shot during happy times in their ex-relationship. Naturally, Beth shows up at the party with a new beau, bumming Rob out completely. Just before one's eyes glaze over from all this heartbreaking stuff (captured by Hud, who's something of a doofus, in laughably shaky camerawork), the unexpected happens: New York is suddenly under attack from a Godzilla-like monster stomping through midtown and destroying everything and everybody in sight. Rob and company hit the streets, but rather than run with other evacuees, they head toward the center of the storm so that Rob can rescue an injured Beth. There are casualties along the way, but the journey into fear is fascinating and immediate if emotionally remote--a consequence of seeing these proceedings through the singular, subjective perspective of a camcorder and of a story that intentionally leaves major questions unanswered: Who or what is this monster? Where did it come from? The lack of a backstory, and spare views of the marauding creature, are clever ways by producer J.J. Abrams and director Matt Reeves to keep an audience focused exclusively on what?s on the screen. But it also makes Cloverfield curiously uninvolving. Ultimately, Cloverfield, with its spectacular effects brilliantly woven into a home-video look, is a celebration of infinite possibilities in this age of accessible, digital media. -Tom Keogh