One Tree Clover? Dawson's Field? Yeah, pretty much. Brief spoilers

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2008)

If you haven't heard felt the hype for this movie, you've pretty much been living with your head in your own butt. That's the only place I can imagine you not getting any residual waves from the intense marketing campaign of this movie.
I was skeptical at first. Walking in to a movie that strictly uses a hand held camera to tell the narrative of a monster attack on Manhattan? Wouldn't it have been easier to tell the same story, but with a steady-cam? The answer is, yes. But would it have been nearly as effective? Oh, hell no.
The movie starts out with Rob, played with boyish charm by Stahl-David, after a night of pure straight up sex with the girl of his dreams, Beth. He's filming the morning after, including a planned trip to Coney Island  a New York native and she's never been? I'll buy it. They were cute together and there was some good chemistry going on.
But SOMEONE forgets to replace the tape in the camera, and the movie jumps forward a month. Rob has just accepted a job as Vice President of something or other (it's never mentioned) in Japan, and there's a surprise party. This is a fairly decent round-robin style introduction to most of the other major players in the game  unwilling cameraman Hud (TJ Miller, who I still find hilarious in the well meaning "Carpoolers")  Rob's brother, Jason, Rob's brother's girlfriend, Lily, and Marlena, played with sarcastic perfection by Lizzy Caplan  the biggest name in the film having starred along side Lindsey Lohan in Mean Girls and a starring role opposite Jason Ritter in 2006's "The Class." You get a good feel for the characters  Rob included  until Beth shows up with her new boyfriend. Apparently after they did the nasty and spent the day at Coney Island, Rob flaked  he was scared that his new job in Japan would drive her away, so he did all the driving away. He never called, never returned her calls, and just tried to avoid her.
Succinctly, as Jason puts it, he was a "jerk".
But enough with the people, am I right? Wrong. It's a good thing this movie establishes the characters because you're spending the next hour with them as they run, scream, die, fight, flirt, crack jokes  the monster never, ever becomes a main character. Which is odd, considering this is, in fact, a monster movie.
After the problems hits the fan and we're all treated to eerie 9/11 flashbacks, the movie picks up. Rob and Beth had a huge falling out at the party. During the evacuation of the city, Rob gets a call. Beth is stuck. The Brooklyn Bridge falls, and Rob realizes what is it worth going through something like this if you can't have the person you love beside you? Does the movie ever degenerate into a love fest? No. I'm glad to say it doesn't. But the love theme does drive the central characters to do some crazy stupid things, be it moving through the street while Clovington III trounces military soldiers, or through subway tunnels in pitch darkness, the motivation to not die alone is the fuel that feeds the fire.
Hud is fine following Rob, his "main dude", because that's who he needs. Marlena, you get the impression early on as she stares longingly at her phone, doesn't really have a whole lot of other people. Lily, the one she's supposed to be with, bites it fairly early on. They're all attached to each other and the hope that finding Beth will some how make things right, make things easier for them.
Of course, the Gods will never let this be. They're given obstacles to overcome, tinier monsters to fight, brief arguments amongst themselves, never losing site of the goal. If Rob can find Beth in this time of horror, if he can find his light, can't we all? You're never given a clean shot of the monster until about 1/3 of the way through and then, surprisingly, I found the monster to be overused. The most effective moments in the movie were contained in the same stretch  the subway tunnel crawl and station holdup  that didn't feature the monster at all. It was mere feet away, above ground, and the constant rumbling helped set the mood, but the idea of the monster was somewhat scarier than the monster itself.
Throughout the film, snippets of the Coney Island trip are played as Hud (ironic as in First Person Shooter games HUD means heads-up-display) turns the camera off and on. It gives a nice juxtaposition to a nicer time when large inverted starfish like beings weren't leveling Manhattan. Remember those days? Those were the salad days.
Connection is the big name of the game. Trying to find someone you can reach out to and hold on to, through thick and thin, while your city is crumbling around you.
If you're expecting to learn about the monster from this film  screw off, it's JJ Abrams. Have things ever been that simple? Be prepared to crawl through video clips, photos, and web journals to piece together where the monster came from.
But enough about that. Did the movie live up to the hype? If you can totally immerse yourself in the twenty something, One Tree Clover or Dawson's Field aura of the movie, yes. Most of the dialog flows naturally, considering the people speaking, and I was amused to find that a good portion of it was improvised.
The camera in the middle of the action puts your right there, in the moment. Once the movie started, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the screen on the goings-on.
Highly impressive at most, slightly moving at the least.