An excellent piece of cinema (no spoilers)

Rating: 10/10 (7 February 2008)

For those who kept an eye on the publicity / viral campaign for Cloverfield (aka Slusho / Clover / Cheese / 1.18.08 / Milk), you'd be forgiven for expecting a film that doesn't live up to the hype. Well, Cloverfield squashes the hype.
An excellent all out monster movie, director Matt Reeves brings you a package of horror, action, drama, suspense, and a little bit of sublime comic relief every now and then.
Set in New York, the basic story (for the uninitiated few) involves a huge monster attacking the city, and gate crashing Rob's (Michael Stahl-David) leaving party. Before long, a small group of survivors take off across the big, wrecked apple in order to save Rob's potential girlfriend, Beth (Odette Yustman). Sounds daft, and may niggle at you for a moment, but you probably won't care ten seconds later.
The film starts well, setting up the characters with quite a while before the mayhem begins. For a film that is all through the lens of one impromptu cameraman, Hud (TJ Miller) - H.U.D, geddit? - the complexity of the characters by the end is quite something.
Cloverfield looks the part, too. The main attraction here is obviously the crumbling city, the various buildings meeting their demise (most people by now have seen the Statue of Liberty's severed head). Also, don't worry; without saying too much, the monster looks the part. Oh yes it does.
A film involving the destruction of NYC is obviously going to bring up some queries of subtext, specifically about 9/11. Reeves and producer JJ Abrams are quite aware of this, and give you the subtext if you want it. There's also denotes of Katrina and Iraq, again, if you want there to be. But hell, this is a monster movie, so you can choose to ignore this and just enjoy the ride.
This is also a movie that wears its influences on its sleeve. Apart from the obvious monster movie look, you can also see Independence Day, War of the Worlds and Escape from New York in there. In one delightful scene which uses the camera's night vision abilities, we get an homage to / rip-off from The Descent. Plus, players of shooter epic Half Life 2 will see some familiar things there too.
Seeing as it's all through one camera, there's no non diegetic music, either. The absence of cinematic effects such as this makes Cloverfield a scarily authentic experience, with believable characters and a not-too-unbelievable plot.
With few, if any, real flaws, this makes Cloverfield a fantastic cinematic experience. This is the type of film you compare to the likes of Jurassic Park, or the aforementioned Independence Day. Do not wait for the DVD; this is something that must be witnessed on the big screen.
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