cloverfield monster

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Movie smartly updates genre for the digital age but beast is disappointing
Cloverfield so smartly reconjures the 1950s monster movie for the digital age, it's sad to report the film's one big dumb mistake: the beast itself.

Let's examine that colossal negative before getting into the many positives.

When we finally get a look midway through the movie at the giant thing that is laying waste to New York in spectacular fashion, it resembles the leftovers of a seafood buffet. Half lizard and half crab, it stumbles around Manhattan like Homer Simpson on a Duff beer bender, knocking over buildings and bridges for no apparent reason. King Kong had a girl to chase and Godzilla an environmental score to settle, but the Cloverfield beastie just seems to have a bad case of indigestion.

Worst of all, it's not as scary as you'd want something to be that is meant to be spawned from our darkest paranoid fears of terrorism, pollution and global catastrophe.

And it's tapping into that subconscious dread, our collective id, where producer J.J. Abrams (TV's Lost), director Matt Reeves (The Pallbearer) and screenwriter Drew Goddard start getting things right.

Grafting the handheld found-video footage style of The Blair Witch Project to the conventions of old-school monster moviedom, they provide just enough exposition to make us care about the characters and to cheer them on as they confront a critter that has risen without warning from the waters off Lower Manhattan, spookily close to the former site of the World Trade Center.

The beast has thoughtlessly interrupted a going-away party on a balmy May evening for corporate striver Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who is moving to Japan for a new job as vice-president of something or other.

He's leaving behind a few loose ends, notably unresolved feelings towards sexy Beth (Odette Yustman), whom we know, courtesy of an idyllic opening flashback, used to be his girlfriend.

Rob's brother Jason (Mike Vogel) and best buddy Hud (T.J. Miller) attempt to maintain an upbeat mood by recording straight-to-camera farewell shout-outs from Rob's pals and fellow partiers.

In this way we get the basics of the on-the-fly scenario and also get to meet the moody Marlene (Lizzy Caplan), whom the doofus Hud is sweet on, and sunny Lily (Jessica Lucas), both of whom will figure along with the three lads in the drama to come.

The lack of name stars in the cast is a plus: It means we have no clue who will survive and who won't.

That drama isn't long in coming. Muffled roars start echoing through the neighbourhood, prompting the partiers to head to the roof to see what's up. They're greeted with what looks suspiciously like a fireworks display (the spartan special effects are well-used but almost laughably basic), which starts to get nasty when projectiles start heading straight towards Rob and company.

They take to the streets, where it's now clear that something like another 9/11 is underway: huge clouds of dust and debris are rushing towards them from the concrete canyons ahead, along with the head of the Statue of Liberty, which clangs alarmingly right at their feet.

This is the film's most potent symbol, the drama of the moment thankfully not spoiled by the endless advance peeks on the Internet and in movie trailers, and the filmmakers employ it for cogent commentary about the obsessions of our digital age.

Rather than immediately fleeing from the severed head of Liberty, people stand around snapping photos of it with their cell-phone cameras.

You almost expect someone to yell, "This will look cool on Facebook!" but it's neither necessary nor desirable to state the obvious. Nor does the film make any direct comment about 9/11, another wise move, since we instinctively make the connection right from the get-go.

There's little time to talk, in any event, although Hud does provide welcome comic relief as he manfully (and somewhat implausibly) keeps filming the action with the party video camera, even as he and his pals run for their lives and confront other fiendish threats.

These include armies of mutant spider crabs, possibly from the same undersea hellhole as the Cloverfield monster, which emerge from dark corners hungry to snag some human flesh in their pincers.

They're way scarier than the main offender, and they help drive the action of the film's middle section, when Rob and friends attempt to run uptown – no mean feat for the ladies in high heels – to rescue wounded Beth from her ruined apartment building.

Their quest adds unexpected romantic drama to the film and also helps us forget the jangling in our stomachs and pounding in our heads from the relentless shaky-cam lensing. (A word to the wise for anyone who experienced vertigo from watching Blair Witch: this will happen to you here, too.)

Through no fault of the filmmakers, who shoot and edit the footage intelligently, the shaky-cam thing starts to seem like a gimmick after a while. Moviegoers have grown used to the trick since Blair Witch almost a decade ago, and it no longer seems either daring or cutting-edge.

Still, it works well in Cloverfield, which is titled for the U.S. Army code name assigned to the footage we are watching, an apparent and ominous reference to the location "formerly known as Central Park" where it was found.