Words can't express how awesome it was, but I'll try anyways

Rating: 8/10 (18 January 2008)

If you aren't already a little curious about this movie, you've been living under a rock since Transformers came out. We've all seen the trailers, we all know the tag lines, hell we even knew the damn release date before we knew the name of the movie.
Like most, the idea of seeing the Statue of Liberty decapitated in a trailer very much made me want to know what the hell 1-18-08 was. Then the title came out, followed by one of the most ingenious viral marketing campaigns ever. Bottom line, whether or not you wanted to see it, you knew what Cloverfield was.
The trailers hit. At my particular showing, you got a trailer for Step Up 2, some MMA movie that looked God awful, and a teaser for the new Star Trek film (also being produced by J.J. Abrams). Bad start I must admit, as I don't like Star Trek and all of the rest of the films were things I'd never see, even for free.
Then the film started. The whole opening and character development was to be honest rather weak. You're given sorted little details about people and then they flip the script so you feel bad for the main character Rob (played AWESOMELY by Michael Stahl-David) cause this chick he is in love with is totally with another guy and blah blah blah. Like I said, a little boring. 20 minutes in though, the actual attack begins. From then on this movie is edge of your seat.
I won't give away much of the plot (everyone should already know what it's about), only critique it. The character development was pretty bad at first, but while you watch these kids through the eyes of a video camera (the whole film is shot via hand held camera a la The Blair Witch Project)you actually really get into it. The plot itself is pretty basic and doesn't require you to really engage the script to understand what is going on. Go into this flick prepared to focus on visuals.
Visually, even with the flaws that come with a hand held camera (meaning if you get motion sickness this might really suck for you) the visuals were unbelievable (in a good way). In the trailer, when you see the head of the Statue of Liberty get hurled across the screen, you really don't think much of it; in the film however, this scene will give you chills. It's important to note that while the monster has very little on screen time, the path of destruction it leaves is enough to scare the hell out of you. The images in this film FEEL one-hundred percent legit, and that's what made this movie really enjoyable and genuinely terrifying. Director Matt Reeves did an amazing job capturing a city that is in utter chaos. The special effects in this movie are mainly limited to explosions and such and looked dramatically realistic as well, big plus for a film nowadays where it has become the norm to have the CGI not look all that great. The team really nailed every aspect of the visual, I can't stress that enough.
As far as the sound department goes, they must have had a hard time doing this film. Where many movies rely on a score or soundtrack to build tension, this film had to rely simply on the sounds made by the actual monster, explosions, and people, and they did a fantastic job. One of the this most horror films lack nowadays are awesomely put together sound fx, which make the movies fall flat. When you hear the roar of the monster, you're freaking out, so you know they did their job damn well.
The acting for the most part was nothing to write home about. In fact, you don't really pay much attention to whether the acting is good or bad simply because you are so caught up in the visual. As mentioned before, the main character you will focus on is Rob, and to his credit Michael Stahl-David did a great job portraying emotion on screen (which is to be expected as he has done theatre in the past).
To write a review of this film won't do it any justice, it's just something you have to see for yourself as the devastation can not be put into words. The carnage you witness on the screen will no doubt make up for the lack of screen time the monster actually has, but when you finally do see the monster in all of its glory (yes, it is glorious) it makes everything well worth it. The only thing I really have left to say is kudos to the crew who worked on this film because you did something that is damn near impossible to do when making a movie about a giant monster attacking a city: you made a film that didn't really at all remind me of Godzilla.
Overall I'd give this film a full 10 stars because it's going to leave you focused entirely on the action and when it's all over, you're going to want to talk about it.