The Beast from Facestomp.com

Rating: 6/10 (18 January 2008)

Early in J.J. Abrams/Matt Reeve's Cloverfield, long before the monster goes on its city destroying rampage, I found myself secretly hoping the beast would turn each and every one of the Emo/MySpace cast into an hors d'uvre, along with 90 percent of the seat-kicking, cell phone using mouth breathers that made up the viewing audience.
Never before have I so enjoyed a movie that contained so many ingredients that I absolutely loathed. Presented as found video footage retrieved from a camcorder in New York's Central Park, Cloverfield "documents" a gigantic beast's blitzkrieg rampage through the city from the point of view of one of the many thousands of fleeing masses typically shown as an afterthought in so many of the Godzilla movies.
I absolutely detest the shaky, jerky, hand-held style of camera work Hollywood wonks seem so enamored with these days, and Cloverfield ramps this up by a factor of 100, complete with out of focus, poorly framed and lit shots  exactly the sort of stuff one would expect to see recorded by some non-professional average Joe.
The movie also suffers from a cast of characters that are as unlikeable as they are unbelievably stupid in their motivations.
Moments before the attack begins, as our intrepid cameraman sets out to document a farewell party for Rob (Michael Stahl-David), the movie's male lead who is about to embark on a new job in Japan, we are clued into a soap-opera sub-plot involving his unrequited love for a hottie named Beth with whom he shared a lone night of hot steamy passion mere weeks earlier. The way I see it, this babe must have rocked Rob's world far more than the number the monster pulls on NYC because throughout the film, Rob, accompanied by his faithful cameraman and two friends, set out to make their way across Manhattan, directly through the creature's path, to locate Beth who called him on his cell to tell him she was trapped in her apartment.
Along the way they are set upon by some nasty critters that have hitched a ride on the big brute, and which may or may not be offspring or parasites - nasty, spidery buggers who emit an unforgettably creepy sound.
Insofar as the main creature itself goes, it can best be described as a variation on that multi-legged mantis-like beast featured in the arena sequence of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, and the decision to reveal it in glimpses, leading up to two final extended shots, is one of the best things about this movie. Throughout I was constantly leaning one way or another, craning my neck to look around buildings, or cursing the cameraman who elected to pan away to his buddies rather than at the creature ripping through the side of a skyscraper.
As movies go, Cloverfield's flaws are numerous (how is it that Rob's phone battery could die out early in the night yet the camcorder seems to never run out of juice? And how long a tape does the damn thing hold?), however what it accurately captures is not so much the rampage of a mysterious beast, but the incessant self-absorption, to the exclusion even of an otherworldly onslaught, of the MySpace crowd.