For all the hype accompanying Cloverfield -- both before and after it arrived in theaters -- the film from producer J.J. Abrams (Lost, Alias) is a fairly traditional but very satisfying disaster/monster movie.
In Cloverfield, a mysterious creature attacks New York City one night. No one knows anything about the creature, and the military seems powerless to bring the monster down as it tears through the city.
Cloverfield built up a lot of hype with an extensive viral marketing campaign including Web sites devoted to theories about the plot, none of which are, in fact, substantiated by the film.
Another marketing strategy was the use of minimalist trailers, the earliest of which included the date but no title. One memorable shot showed the head of the Statue of Liberty flying through the air and crashing down into the pavement, which has also lead to preposterous claims that the film is exploiting anxieties about the Sept. 11 attacks to sell tickets.
The film's actual plot, however, contains the typical running in fear and destruction of property expected from the disaster/monster genre, though the presentation is creative.
Most notably, the entire movie is filmed from the perspective of a handheld video camera held by a member of a small group of people trying to find their way to safety.
It's an effective technique in several ways.
Cloverfield begins with about 10 minutes of footage before disaster strikes, showing scenes from a going-away party for a member of the group, Rob (Michael Stahl-David). This gives the audience time to get to know the group a little bit before they're too busy running for their lives to develop as characters.
The guy behind the camera, Hud (T.J. Miller), is actually the most entertaining of the bunch, rubbernecking with the camcorder to get shots of the monster even as he's running away.
And his complaints and jokes, alone, inject enough humor into the movie to keep it from becoming a faceless horror picture.
The handheld perspective also makes the action sequences more compelling. The audience sees only as much about the monster as the characters do: brief glances at it during attacks and glimpses of rushed news reports. This also means the audience is as scared as the characters are.
And once the attack hits, there is hardly a moment in the movie's 85-minute running time that the characters pause to take a breath.
Many viewers have complained, however, that the constantly shaking camera made them feel nauseous, so be warned if you are prone to motion sickness.
There's a type of moviegoer who will accept the premise of a giant monster ravaging New York yet nit-pick the film's finer details. It may be implausible that the group would trudge into the heart of the city just to rescue some guy's girlfriend, for instance, but the movie balances this by portraying them as regular people vulnerable to harm and always afraid.
The real implausibility here is the durability of the camera, which survives explosions, monster attacks, the force of a panicked mob and military bombings without even cracking its lens.
Many who have disliked Cloverfield have cited its brevity and simple plot as flaws.
But this is a monster movie that devotes its time to explosions, not exposition, and the mysterious nature of the attack only makes it more suspenseful.
It may suffer slightly from the massive promotional build-up, but in terms of excitement, very few modern horror movies offer this much sheer enjoyment.
Grade: B+
