Exhilarating and relentless experience that echoes the first-hand, hand-held footage of 9/11 and transforms it into a thing of pure terror and threat without exploitation.

Rating: 8/10 (4 June 2009)

There is a scene in Roland Emmerich's 1998 film Godzilla in which a character is holding a video camera as the aforementioned monster walks towards him, eventually standing on him, but seeing the character survive. The notion of an individual with a video camera as a large monster gallivants towards them will almost certainly never be seen in the same way again following Cloverfield. Films like Cloverfield are the reason films like Godzilla age; they take the idea to another level and render a prior project, that wasn't done sufficiently well in the first place, close to complete garbage. If, in the past, we were supposed to chuckle at said scene in Godzilla with our tongues firmly within our cheeks, then viewing it again after Cloverfield will produce full-blown laughs; specifically AT the text rather than with it.
Some of my favourite films from last year carried a very brooding sense of both overall menace and danger, specifically: There Will Be Blood; Lust, Caution; No Country for Old Men and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days to mention but a few. Cloverfield is additionally one of my favourites from last year, in the sense it carries a brooding sense of danger and menace but maintains a certain style; a certain craft and a certain aesthetic that makes the experience exciting, memorable and equally engaging but through different techniques. Shame on anyone that dismisses this as a shaky-cam, substance-less and seemingly mindless piece of entertainment that cannot rank along said films when in actual fact, it carries the necessary conventions to make it a worthwhile piece.
Cloverfield sees a group of contemporary Americans, armed with one of the most durable diegetic cameras in cinematic history, flee their apartment building on the night of a party as a huge explosion and subsequent events both horrific and mysterious transpire. They make their way through the ever-increasingly swamped city of New York, as populated by innocent by-standers trying to fathom what's going on, in the meek hope of finding Beth (Yustman), one of the character's partners. In every sense of the word, the film is punishing, but in a positive sense. The camera in Cloverfield takes more punishment than either of the two featured in The Blair Witch Project; the characters take a battering, the city of New York takes a battering through some impressive special effects and basic-as-you-like generic horror conventions take a battering. Take for example, the scene in the underground railway system in which the lights are off and something's in there with you: a set up so ordinary and so basic is actually made to feel fresh and quite frightening.
The film begins in an ominous fashion, with a subtitle telling us the following footage was found in an area 'formerly known as Central Park', planting seeds in our minds that suggest destruction and devastation - something seems to have happened that renders Central Park of the past tense. This additionally introduces the audience into a sense of viewership, thus placing us in the bodies of a highly ranked government official or someone else of vast importance as we sit down and prepare for footage of top secrecy. The film then goes down the very effective route of unfolding all this entirely from a first person perspective, that of a character named Hud (Miller) who is holding the camera, which really immerses us in this unfolding, ensuing action-come-survival film.
The point of attack, in the nicest possible way, sees a surprise party held for Rob (Stahl-David) as he heads off to Japan (a reference to the nation that gave us Godzilla) to start a new job. The opening features all the typical, hand-held shots as shot by someone at a party and sets up the shooting style for the rest of the film. During the set up, we get various paper-thin introductions to various people that do not necessarily require immense introduction, but need enough on them for us to be able to invest time with them. This, however basic or mundane, Cloverfield achieves during this segment. The characters that we do follow, along with Hud the camera man, consist of: Jason (Vogel); Marlena (Caplan) and Lilly (Lucas).
The film deliberately lacks that narrative drive, with escape from New York and general survival the aim of the game. Primarily, the film sees its characters try as hard as they can to rescue Beth from her apartment in a part of town that has been hit by the destruction hardest. What unfolds is a street level drama that sometimes delves below ground or into the nether-regions of an apartment block in order to get a cross further thrills and chills and it actually works really well. A word on when they actually go below deck; in a scene that sees them begin in a subway station – a further stomping of 1998's Godzilla into a hole that it now thoroughly deserves to be buried in, when, you'll remember, the climax to that film saw equivalently-sized beasties stalk the lead characters through a subway station. Oh, how that is looking old now.