The thing that ate Manhattan
wwwww

Spoilers ahead!

Cloverfield is a film about 9/11. It's also a brilliant monster movie, but such a depressing one: all fear and panic and, noticably, no happy ending. "What is that thing?" one terrified person asks. "We don't know," replies a solider, "but it's winning." America's worst nightmare, in monster form.

We see this film entirely through the eyes of Hud (T.J. Miller) a partygoer who happens to be holding a video camera when the lights go out and the destruction starts. The party is for Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who is technically our hero throughout the film. He's just loved and then lost Beth (Odette Yustman), and after the intial shock of a gigantic monster eating the city, determinedly heads off across the city to find her. He's accompanied by a gang of friends, not all of whom may make it through the film alive.

The video camera seems like a gimmick, and at times it seems unrealistic for Hud to keep holding it even in the most lethal of situations (on top of a collapsing building!), but we're living in the YouTube universe now and that's not such a bad thing. Reading the newpapers after the London bombings I saw blurred pictures taken from camera phones, and this film reminded me of that, especially the scene where horrified people gather around the Statue of Liberty's thrown head and take pictures of it. Perhaps what this film really gets is human's desperate desire to record what happens to them. Even in the most horrible circumstances imaginable, people write and photograph and turn on the video camera, wanting their story, which has taken such an unexpected turn, to be known.

It's not all heavy stuff, though. There's some brilliant sequences- a incredibly tense scene where our heroes, hiding underground, have to fight off parasites that the monster's brought to earth with it- and the monster itself is an incredible creation. Even when you finally see it properly, it doesn't disappoint. There's also a throughly disgusting death scene which, while you don't get to see all of it, will probably please the horror movie fans in the audience.

The characters are reasonably one-dimensional, but that's only to be expected. They're templates really, we're free to imagine them as us. They make surprisingly few basic horror-movie mistakes, too. Except clearly they've yet to learn that when all the rats are running away, there's a monster in the tunnel...

The cast, made up of mostly unknowns, is excellent. While this isn't exactly a movie where you'd expect acting chops to be stretched much, this film could have been let down if the cast had been bad, and it wasn't. I'm also thankful that no big stars joined the cast; it wouldn't have been the same movie had that happened.

In conclusion- this really does deserve to be placed among the great monster movies. It's not perfect, but it's so intense that you probably won't notice- the sort of film you get caught up in and come out dazed. It's a sign of the times as well: there's no scientists or soldiers to save the day, there's no gurantee the main characters won't die, and we see it all through a video camera held by a panicked, confused ordinary person. I can't imagine what they'll do for a sequel.
 

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