With Hud's own eyes

Rating: 7/10 (11 February 2008)

Starting with the fabled 16th century "chain map" of Florence, Rennaissance draughtsmen would place likenesses of themselves, sketchpad and feather in hand, in the foreground of their cityscapes. These tiny self-portraits act as warrants of authenticity: they had been on site to see their subjects first hand. Similarly, Matt Reeves makes us believe that we witness a monster attack on Manhattan through the lens of a party-goer's hand-held video camera. To authenticate the footage, he has Hudson "Hud" Platt (first-time screen actor T.J. Miller) shoot flashes of his own face at regular intervals, exactly the way the draughtsmen inserted themselves into their designs. The camera tilts and jiggles to suggest Hud is actually filming this as he runs from a very ill-tempered lizard the size of the Chrysler building. But the crystal-clear footage is on 35mm film, not videotape, and of course the jiggling isn't at all like the shakes of "real" hand-held video. But what's real anyway? The whole thing is an illusion, fabricated to corroborate an illusion. This is also how this is different from "The Blair Witch Project", which was actually (mostly) shot on video. "Cloverfield" starts out as a fully-fledged rich kid relationship drama. Until the monster hits town some 20 minutes later, you can't even be sure you're in the right movie. All in all, I think it's pretty clever for a mainstream thriller. Oh, and Lizzy Kaplan is very hot in the part of Hud's love interest, deadpan beauty Marlena Diamond.