An American Godzilla Take (Also Featuring Character Depth)

Rating: 9/10 (10 March 2017)

While on vacation in Japan, film producer J.J. Abrams was startled to still see Godzilla merchandise in stores. After decades in the public eye, that monster still had a hold on the national culture. With that experience in mind, Abrams set out to have his production company--Bad Robot--create a similar tale. It succeeds wildly, not only taking viewers on a rip-roaring disaster-epic adventure, but also buffering it with enough human interest moments to make it all hang together.
For a very basic overview, "Cloverfield" begins with a bunch of young New Yorkers throwing a going-away party for one of their own. From their high-rise, however, they witness a terrifying creature wreaking havoc on Manhattan Island. As the film's tag line says: Some thing has found us. When one of them becomes trapped and needs assistance, the film turns into a quest to retrieve her, all the while documenting the attack in a found-footage, handheld camera method of filming.
There is very little "setup" to this movie, which is by design. Director Matt Reeves simply throws viewers into the fracas, which truly makes the experience seem visceral in a lot of ways that other films fail. You will feel as if you are right there with the main characters as they try to navigate the crumbled streets of NYC, every once in awhile getting a glimpse of the hideous, mysterious beast. The filmmakers here very much follow the "Jaws" rule of only showing glimpses of the creature in the early goings, building upon the suspense with further looks as the movie goes on.
But "Cloverfield" isn't just a mindless disaster epic either. Thanks to the documentarian style of filming and the acting, the characters feel like real people (absolutely necessary for the style of the experience). This is a party that you could be at, with people you could very well know. In order to provide even further depth, the ingeniously simple plot device of showing small flashback clips on the videocamera gives all the motivation necessary to hang with the unfolding events as they happen. Multiple references to terrorism themes also center the film in a post-9/11 world.
For many, "Cloverfield" seems to be a rather polarizing flick. Some don't like the shaky-cam style, while others don't feel it transcends a monster movie destruction epic. For me, though, in terms of pure science fiction (mixed with human drama), I consider this to be one of my favorite little films of all-time. There's never a dull moment (it has less than a 90 minute runtime to begin with) and one just gets the feeling that the entire project was a labor of love and care. While technically a "studio film" in the sense that it was distributed by Paramount, it was made for a thrifty $25 million and has a very "indie" feel to it.