New York has been plagued by monsters, aliens and super-villains for decades! Just a few weeks ago Will Smith had to single-handedly fight for survival in the Big Apple against a load of vampire/zombie things! Godzilla was bothering Mathew Broderick in that fair city ten years ago, so New York is well overdue the arrival of a giant monster to tear the place apart.

The run-up to the release of this movie showed very little, but I think that was a great move. The only poster that they unveiled showed us the smoking, smashed-up city standing behind a decapitated Statue of Liberty. The trailer was also similarly coy in revealing very much to the eager and inquisitive audiences wondering what the hell Cloverfield was. I think that more films should do this rather than exposing most of the basic plot in just a thirty second trailer.

Cloverfield is different from any previous monster movie, this film is shot from the point of view of a small group of people trapped in the centre of Manhattan through their hand held camera (echoing The Blair Witch Project). The video starts as a video of a going-away party but within minutes the power flickers, explosions flare up in the distance and the Statue of Liberty’s head crashes down into the street.

The army evacuates as many people as possible but the remaining party guests receive a call from a trapped friend. They roam through the stricken city which quickly escalates into a war zone, with even more strange creatures causing havoc! The monster is never actually explained, nobody knows where it is from, what it wants or what happens to it.

The monster itself is not even seen that much, there are plenty of glances of it in the distance. Eventually you do see the creature and it is worth the wait, it’s great to see a monster that isn’t humanoid or looks at all similar to an everyday creature.

To be honest I haven’t seen that much of J.J. Abrams work (Lost, Alias) but he does seem to have an air of mystery surrounding his projects, not even publicly naming them. A sequel-ish follow-up has been announced; it may be a very different tale or it may be the same chain of events seen from the perspective of a different group of people, very little is known and I doubt we will know anything until it’s released.

Cloverfield will change monster movies; I believe we will see them becoming far more intimate so that you really feel you are there. The barely edited look keeps you guessing what’s going to happen next. The only real problem with this film is it ends several times and the clip at the end of the credits isn’t worth the wait at all!

by David Price