Effective

Rating: Null/10 (30 March 2008)

New York, present day. A group of friends in their twenties is throwing a going away party one evening when their apartment is shaken by what appears to be an earthquake. They rush outside and find the Statue of Liberty's head has been blown off and is hurtling towards them. The city is under attack.
CLOVERFIELD is told entirely by a video camera carried by one of the characters. The opening scenes are unbearable: constantly moving, badly framed, hand-held camera work sure to make many cinema goers motion sick. The party scene is rather routine: we've seen these characters and situations many times before.
But when the attack begins, the film really takes off and we're thrown into the chaos. We travel through the dust-covered streets, a setting with which we're all too familiar after September 11. We travel through a subway tunnel, through a military hospital set up in a department store and to a high-rise building that is collapsing onto the building nearby - something I haven't seen in a film before.
The journey has a real authenticity and I don't think it would have worked any other way than as this verite-style mockumentary. You really feel the panic and are willing to believe - most of - the incredible situations. But as the film progresses and we witness one narrow escape after the next it becomes harder to want to believe. And I'm not convinced the character with the camera would continue shooting footage for as long as he does. Perhaps this would work better if the character were a seasoned documentary maker.
There are flashbacks, achieved when the video tape is stopped at certain points in the film. We see brief moments of what was recorded on the tape earlier in happier times and this contrast serves the story well.
Comparisons to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and 28 DAYS LATER are inevitable. Like these films, CLOVERFIELD is very effective at creating a sense of dread by immersing the audience in the character's world.