The gimmick in the delivery is effective and impressive in the midst of the action but the characters and narrative take away more than they add

Rating: Null/10 (17 February 2008)

A group of young New Yorkers are holding a surprise going-away party in Upper-East-Side Manhattan, with the only excitement being revelations about the relationships between some of the friends. However a massive boom brings the party to an end and everyone heads to the roof in time to see further explosions, culminating with the head of the Statue of Liberty hitting their block. They attempt to flee Manhattan along with everyone else on the island while the military flood in from the other direction but a phone message from one of the group sees them heading back to try and rescue her as well.
The first "big" film of 2008 deserves credit for what it does very well indeed, which is its marketing strategy. Although I failed to see any of the trailers until the week before release, even I knew about it a year ago. Given the extent of the hype surrounding the film, it is hard to fault it in this regard. However when I got around to actually seeing the film, the way it had been sold was not really a factor in my enjoyment (or not) of it so I put this all to one side. The film opens slowly with an introduction to the characters and establishing of the party for later but after what does seem like an age we get the "attack" finally happening and with it comes the panic and hand-held chaos that the trailers gave us.
The next twenty minutes or so of this are great as we are thrown right into the middle of it and the effect is dizzying but yet very real. Many have compared this to the Blair Witch Project in its gimmick (the discovered "real" tape watched after the event) but this is not the gimmick that I think Cloverfield is built on. Instead the film relies heavily on the fact that we have all watched the news in the last two years and will have experienced many "real" events through the eyes of camera-phones and shaky-handed survivors as they are replayed on the network news programmes. This is a clever and effective gimmick and it is one that is at its strongest when it is making the action and attack the focus.
Sadly the gimmick does not work as well when it is trying to hold a narrative together because this is not what we are used to. Of course it doesn't help that the story is not that great. I didn't really want a mission back into the city and it did feel like the plot had been come up with to try and ensure ongoing action in the danger-zones rather than everyone running away. Massive coincidences ensure this feels more clunky and obvious than it should and, outside of the most intense scenes, you do feel it. The fact that I didn't like the characters was probably a bit of an obstacle to me as well. It is not just that they are young, it is that they are impossibly beautiful people who live wonderful lives in a wonderful city; it would not have hurt to have had a bit of diversity in the group to try and reduce this but then I suppose the makers know who their target audience are. The cast of mostly unknowns deliver well enough in terms of running and being frightened convincingly while looking attractive but the film is not about them and they are annoying at the times when the detail of their problems become the focus. I did like that the film treat them all as equally disposable though.
Reeves directs the action really well though and is helped by tremendous special effects that manage to feel real whether it is the destruction of buildings or a massive lizardy creature being fired on by jets. Indeed this is what the film is best at as it recreates the feeling of fear and destruction that we all experienced on television on 11th September 2001. Overall then this is why it is worth seeing  for the parts where the city is being destroyed and we are simply stuck in the middle of it all; just a shame that the characters and story seem to get in the way more than that they enhance the experience.