It Has Ups And Downs But Mostly Ups

Rating: 7/10 (14 November 2008)

Cloverfield surely has to rank as one of the better "monster" movies made in a long time. It's filmed in a style reminiscent of "The Blair Witch Project" - one of the characters has a hand held camera and records the unbelievable events surrounding an attack on New York by a huge, somewhat dinosaur looking monster (although we never really get a clear look at it) that somehow drops little "mini-monsters" that create their own havoc. The film is then supposedly discovered by the government after the event. The weakest part of the movie, I thought, was the opening 20 minutes or so, focused on a party being given for one of the characters who's moving to Japan. To be honest, I found that whole thing a bore (and some of the rather unimportant material introduced in that opening kept seeping into the rest of the movie unfortunately) but once the monster is introduced (by way of what seemed to be a sort of earthquake that rattled everything and even made me jump) it becomes a very entertaining and at times rather frightening movie. It's at times confusing - and deliberately so, since it's attempting to draw you into the absolute chaos and terror that has suddenly engulfed this group of people. There's an eerie resemblance here to scenes of 9/11, with buildings collapsing and clouds of dust choking everything and papers flying through the air. Overall, it's very well done, definitely draws you in after that slow start and maintains the atmosphere of panic all the way through. 7/10