A sort of fresh take on a genre that's been there, done that.....

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2008)

**Warning, this review contains some spoilers**
Cloverfield desperately wants to be an invigorating, fresh take on the monster movie genre. In this quest, it achieves only marginal success. Cloverfield appears to have had the strongest January premiere weekend to date, but time will tell if the film has legs. Negative word of mouth may hurt this movie in the long run.
Cloverfield's premise is one of classified footage of the events in the movie recovered from a site 'formerly known as Central Park' after the fact. The film begins with home movie footage of a couple, post night of romance, then moves on to more footage of a going away party for one of the main characters. The party lasts roughly 20 minutes of screen time and is an obvious attempt to familiarize the audience with the main characters and to gain empathy with them for the ensuing events. The party sequence could have lasted 5 minutes and been just as effective as it tends to drag on, becoming boring, and morph into a very special episode of any of the teen angst drama TV shows.
Eventually, things begin to heat up and events unfold as the monster attacks NYC, people flee, people die, etc. All of this continues to be told from an immediate first-person perspective shot with the same camcorder used in the party. (ala Blair Witch)
My problems with Cloverfield are not with the plot (this is essentially a monster movie, and all of the appropriate suspensions of disbelief need to be made). If you are looking for an accurate portrayal of how real life people might react should a city be attacked by a giant monster, this movie is not for you. (Do I document the almost constant peril my friends and I find ourselves in, or put the camera down and GTFO?) The idea that every last question is not answered (in fact most of them aren't) was refreshing to an extent.
My problems lay with the execution. The shaky cam made me nauseous and from reading many other reviews, I'm not alone. If you get motion sickness, avoid seeing Cloverfield on the big screen and wait until the DVD where the effect will be dramatically lessened. Character development was poor. I felt little empathy for the characters. The ending left many questions, which will annoy some people. (though no one walked out at my theater, there was booing and grumbling)
In the end, the concept of showing a disaster from the perspective of the people who experienced it is somewhat unique, leads to some good moments of suspense, and creates a degree of immersion in a genre that has been there, done that. However, it is woefully overused (but notice how when an important event occurs, Hud suddenly becomes cameraman of the year?) and will make some people sick, ruining the overall effect.