A movie to "experience"

Rating: 9/10 (19 January 2008)

Nay sayers of "Cloverfield" will point to the inevitable: it is herky-jerky, kind of plot less, and a tad two-dimensional with a dash of too many beautiful people.
Well, opinions are like... y'know.
Cloverfield takes a tired genre of disaster films and horror melange and brings it into a class that unfortunately has to be compared to "The Blair Witch Project" and a few other choice first person horror narratives. However, Cloverfield takes the "less is more" genre, from where "Blair Witch" left it off and truly brings it to another level. It follows with an unflinching lens (a handicam none-the-less) a group of friends, lovers and relatives in a seemingly mundane day that turns into a classic life and death struggle, and the heroic efforts of the cast as the mysterious events unfold - something (a very big something) is attacking NYC.
Cloverfield is the "B" film spirit with an "A" cast/crew, and I think that's the point. It takes the cheesy "Godzilla vs. insert whatever here" and completely re-invents the way that it is portrayed. I did find the plot a little scattered, other than the story of a group of people on a quixotic quest - but I think that the "crazy" viewpoint of the videotape (it's from the viewpoint of someone watching a videotape, not just holding the camera) and people making decisions under pressure is what captivated me the most. That and the fact that you are being given just enough: in the character development, the one camera viewpoint, the special effects, the reveals - that I really wanted to "experience" more and more. And how many movies can you say that about? For most of the action, I felt like I was as close as I needed to be. I liked being part of it, but detached at the same time. Cloverfield is thrilling, and I don't get that from many movies anymore.
This is one of those films that challenges you. It leads you along and spoon feeds you, but only because revealing everything at once would have made this a tired story line of city officials spouting BS melodramatic lines about saving the city and the token child and dog routine, everyone running away as the hero saves the day. That's just old.
There are no easy scenes here, not a lot of explanation, no scoring (save for a soundtrack of organic sounds), there are no Hollywood super stars mucking it all up and I know it's not real life - but it feels as authentic as any sci-fi/horror/action movie is going to get. I think the obvious correlations to terrorism etc are contemporary for our time, and to be honest I am good with that: Real and imagined Monsters loom in the deep and can attack at any time.
Cloverfield is not for streamlined movie goers - this is for people who like to feel like they can suspend their disbelief and put themselves into the other persons shoes. Somehow this movie struck a chord with me that's been missing for sometime. It's a shame that a movie like this can come along only every so often. If it did, it would feel like an overused gimmick. Thankfully it runs just long enough to not overstay its welcome.