A Review of the movie "Cloverfield"

I have a fondness for those giant monster movies, most of them made in Japan and involving a man in a rubber suit. Whether it was a giant, fire-breathing, flying turtle with giant teeth or the master himself, Godzilla, there was something delightful about the cheesy special effects and endless shots of Japanese citizens looking over their shoulders and running while badly dubbed dialogue played over their lips. The one thing that those movies were not, however, was scary. Everyone in the movie looked terrified, but there was nothing terrifying in the movie. Even the first "Godzilla," which many consider a classic, was not very scary. No matter what you did, you couldn't escape the fact that the big guy looked kinda cross-eyed and like a dude in a rubber suit.

When it came to scary you couldn't get past the original, which was really the 1930s version of "King Kong." Yes, the giant gorilla still looked fake, but he did NOT look like a guy in a rubber suit. The jerky stop-motion animation of the creature made it seem even scarier to me as a kid. There was an other-wordly feel to him that made him seem big and terrifying.

Well, early in this year the producer of "Lost" and "Alias," JJ Abrams directed and wrote a movie called "Cloverfield" and it attempted to put the big-monster movie right at ground level, where it would actually be scary. His conceit was simple, put the movie right at ground level with the people who actually would be running for their lives, never truly knowing exactly what was going on or what was happening and keep it there. What would that be like? Godzilla as a movie monster may not have been scary (not even in that awful remake) but if an actual giant fire-breathing lizard came ashore at your near-by metropolis and started stomping around, it would be.

"Cloverfield" is very simple. It follows a bunch of nobody actors who seem and feel pretty much like real people. They are gathered that night to say good-bye to a guy named Rob who, ironically, is about to head over to Japan for a long assignment for work. It is a huge party and his best friend, Hud, is given the task of documenting the party and taking testimonials. Suddenly, the entire building shakes. Something seems to explode in the distance. Then, the head of the Statue of Liberty come crashing through a building and lands on the street right in front of the building where Rob, Hud and his friends are (convenient shot there, monster).

The monster itself is barely glimpsed throughout much of the films. Abrams seems to have taken a cue from Spielberg and "Jaws" and realized that the entire thing is scarier if you just see a foot or a brief glimpse of a head or just a tail smashing something than the entire thing. Of course, this is not a guy in a rubber suit, but CGI, but you don't want people to spend too much time looking at the special effects. What you want is to be there on the ground, emotionally invested in the characters who set out into Manhattan, trying to get out of the city and not being able to.

This is what it would be like, for the most part, to be on the ground when something like this happens. There are scenes eerily reminiscent of 9/11 as crowds of people attempt to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. There are scenes of buildings crumbling and huge clouds of dust cascading down streets and people covered in dust and walking with that shocked, dazed expression we saw over and over again on CNN.

The one problem is that Hud has to film everything. Which leads to some kind of suspension of disbelief. I mean, if you were there, would you really carry that damn camera with you and keep it up to your face? I know I would just drop the freaking thing and run at some point, figuring that the news channels were getting enough pictures that I could watch later and see plenty of shots of the thing.

Rob and his friends decide to go and rescue his girlfriend, Beth, whose building has been knocked over into another building by the monster. This leads to a harrowing climb out a broken window onto a tilted roof. There are also dozens of parasites that drop off of the giant monster and attack people, in one particularly scary scene in the subway tunnels. These things don't only bite, but they carry some kind of disease or poison so, if you just get bitten and survive, you may not be out of the woods.

There are a lot of questions and they just aren't answered, as would be the case if you were on the ground running for your life and not at home sitting in front of one of those new channels. Where did the monster come from? What is the military doing about it? Why can't the military seem to stop it?

We get only one really good shot of the monster, near the end, and there would be no way I could describe this thing for you. It does not look, at least to me, like any other movie monster I have seen before. The scene is fairly harrowing and scary, but not as much as some of the previous ones.

The shaky camera movements get a little nauseating at times, but the characters feel real and I found myself very involved in their lives and wondering what would happen. It is a movie not particularly long, which also lends itself well to the method of the story-telling. It is shot very well, fairly low on special-effects shots, and a decent horror movie. In short, I liked it, and I think you will too.

"Cloverfield" is now available via DVD and on OnDemand.