We're living in a YouTube nation. As advancements in technology have allowed handheld video recorders to become smaller, more compact, and easier to handle with each passing year (hell, you can even shoot video and take pictures with your cell phone these days), suddenly everybody's trying to channel their inner Spielberg or Scorsese. The internet is flooded with an endless mountain of video files, everything from little Suzie's 5th birthday party to footage of natural disasters as they occur.

Nearly a decade ago, The Blair Witch Project took a cinema verite approach to an old-fashioned spook story, fashioning some cleverly compiled "found" footage from a group of missing documentary filmmakers into a disturbingly plausible and eerie falsified snuff film. Love it or hate it, the film made scads of cash off impressed filmgoers, who could see themselves in the film's cast of relatable rattled unknowns (who are still essentially unknown today), filming the movie's supernatural creepiness as it unfolded, with a lack of Hollywood gloss but substituting a crude, galvanizing raw intensity. Now, Lost producer J.J. Abrams and director Matt Reeves have taken the same basic gimmick and applied it to an old-fashioned Toho "Monster Movie" template in his intriguing, frequently gripping technical experiment Cloverfield.

Opening with some blank videotape leader and text labeling the following footage as property of the U.S. government and having been recovered at "the site formerly designated Central Park ", the film opens with camcorder footage dated April 27th, wherein we're introduced to Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) and Beth McIntyre (Odette Yustman), a pair of photogenic, twenty-something New York lovebirds who, having Beth's dad's apartment to themselves for the day, treat themselves to a trip to Coney Island (Beth's never been). Suddenly, there's a jarring tape edit and the date at the bottom of the screen now reads May 22nd, as Rob's brother Jason (Mike Vogel) has started taping over Rob and Beth's happy day out nearly a month prior, as he and friend Lilly Ford (Jessica Lucas) are getting ready to start filming a surprise going-away party for Rob, who's on his way to a posh new job in Japan. Just as the party is starting up, Jason passes on his job as videographer of the event to Rob's best bud Hudson "Hud" Platt (T.J. Miller), who's more interested in zooming in on hottie partygoer Marlena Diamond (Lizzy Caplan) than in conducting the series of talking-head goodbye messages that are supposed to accompany Rob on his trip.

Rob finally arrives at the party, only to be more interested in mooning over his deteriorating relationship with Beth than in enjoying his celebration. Seems Beth slept with another man, and following an awkward, partially-eavesdropped conversation, Beth sets off in a snit. But, all too soon, a catastrophic event occurs that will make all the 90210 angst seem small and petty...

There's a massive, concussive boom that briefly knocks out power to all of Manhattan. When the lights come back on, the frightened and perplexed partygoers see a developing story on the news about an oil tanker that has apparently capsized in the harbor. Making for the roof in an attempt to get a glimpse of the disaster, Rob and his gaggle of friends are instead witness to a gigantic, raging fireball that starts raining down flaming debris in all directions. Making a panicky beeline for the stairwell and the "safety" of the street, the gang instead sees something even crazier come rolling down the street like a battered tennis ball... the severed noggin of the Statue Of Liberty! Now, it's all-out chaos, as everyone seeks shelter against a colossal plume of dust erupting from the base of a collapsing building at the far end of the block.

Emerging, blinking and coughing, from their hidey-holes, Rob, Hud, Lilly, Marlena and Jason decide to get the hell out of Dodge, asking police officers and military personnel what in God's name is going on and only getting fragmentary, confused replies. Soon, they become abundantly aware that a titanic... THING has emerged from the ocean and is currently blundering through the concrete and steel canyons of New York. The military is desperately trying to mobilize against the monster evan as the terrified populace is busy trying to keep out from under the creature's stomping feet. Even worse is when the creature starts shedding ooky "parasites" from it's body like dried-up skin flakes. Looking like junior versions of the "arachnids" from Starship Troopers, these rapacious little vermin soon start spreading throughout the city, snapping their venomous jaws at every person in sight.

But one final complication prevents Rob and friends from heading for the hills... a call coming over Rob's cell phone from Beth. Barely audible, Rob hears Beth's desperate voice croaking out that she's pinned in her demolished apartment and can't move. Despite being told repeatedly that Beth's probably dead already, Rob nevertheless heads back into the danger zone, with Hud relentlessly taping their excursion ("People are gonna wanna know how this went down") and the group finding themselves under siege the whole way from the creature's rampage, it's parasitic spawn (making a memorably creepy appearance during a tense, pitch-black sequence in the New York subway system) and the military (not caring a whit for whatever collateral damage accrues during their attempts to take the seemingly invincible monster down).

Taking obvious visual cues from 9/11 and the unforgettable, as-it-happened media coverage of that terrible day, Cloverfield fuses that sense of mounting, directionless dread with the romping, stomping, city-smashing mayhem of the classic, beloved cheesy Toho monster movies of the 1960's and 70's. The film's teasing advertising campaign had internet geeks in a tizzy trying to determine what kind of disaster was being hinted at in the film's early trailers (It's another American remake of Godzilla! It's Voltron! It's the Smoke Monster from Lost!), but the critter we get mostly obscure glimpses of during the film is more akin to a hairless, knuckle-walking ape dragging a pair of withered, vestigial legs behind it. It's one of the most unique creature designs in recent memory (at least since The Host), and, if Abrams and company manage to get a more conventionally-shot sequel off the ground, I can't wait to see what they do with it.

While the classic Godzilla films pretty much soft-pedaled the street-level destruction and death tolls of the countless monster smack downs (the original, 1954 film being a rare exception), Cloverfield puts the viewer right in the middle of the action as it unfolds, and the film's mostly unknown cast does a convincingly rattled job selling the terror and confusion as events consistently get worse and worse (the video feed occasionally breaking up to show "flashbacks" of Rob and Beth's happy trip to Coney Island a month prior). Yeah, the presentation is a "gimmick", but it's a pretty damn good gimmick, and Cloverfield manages to take a tried-and-true monster movie and breathe new life into the expected plot machinations.

I've found it unusual that many attacked this film because of it's "vapid" and "self-centered" protagonists, accusations which baffle me. One can quibble that some of Hud's constant wisecracks seem out-of-place, but so many of them are legitimately funny, I can let them slide. And as for being "self-centered"... um, isn't Rob risking his life to venture into the city to rescue his ex-girlfriend? Aren't Rob's friends standing by him despite the constant danger to life and limb? Maybe people just hated the characters for being A.) Attractive, B.) Affluent, and C.) Young, but that's par for the course for contemporary internet criticism (i.e. whiny fanboy bitching). At any rate, Cloverfield is a unique twist on an old story, and is certainly worth viewing at least once to make up one's own mind.

Presentation
It's always difficult to properly grade a transfer for a film that's full of intentional visual mistakes and technical glitches (see Grindhouse), but Cloverfield's 1:85.1 anamorphic transfer still looks damn good. Shot on DV cameras, the image is appropriately jittery and grainy, yet still allows the viewer to take in all the necessary visual information. The 5.1 audio track kind of gives away the whole "found" footage gimmick, because no handheld video camera currently on the market can record discrete 5.1 surround audio on the go, yet what's a monster movie without a proper sonic collage of roars, screams, and crashing debris? Everything comes across with sub woofer-rattling panache, the otherwise music-free soundtrack suddenly blossoming into a full-blooded orchestral suite over the end titles penned by J.J. Abrams' pet composer Michael Giacchino (Alias, Lost, Mission: Impossible 3) that plays wonderful tribute to the rumbling, crash & bash scores provided by the late Akira Ifukube for the classic Toho monster films.

Extras
An audio commentary by director Matt Reeves digs into the secrecy swirling around the film's production, the amount of green screen work versus the New York location footage, Reeves' long term relationship with J.J. Abrams, and the online theorizing that swirled around the film's mysterious advertising campaign. This is an excellent, fun track packed pull of information. We're also treated to the two featurettes Document 1-18-08: The Making Of Cloverfield (28:17) and Cloverfield Visual Effects (22:29), the former offering an overview of the project's origins (Abrams and his son traveled to Tokyo for M:I-3's Japanese premiere, and Abrams was so taken by the fact that Godzilla merchandise was still selling like hotcake's over 50 years after his first screen appearance that he yearned to create an "official" monster for the U.S. to call it's own) and interviews with the cast and crew. There's a whiff of EPK backslapping, but overall this does an efficient job chronicling the film's breakneck production. The latter looks at the creation of the film's F/X, which, due to a combination of the tight budget and the fact that they had to be added to a film that was completely handheld, offered a monumental challenge to the CG wizards. You'll be surprised how seamless the final result is. There are countless shots in the finished film that I was completely unaware had digital tweaking.

I Saw It! It's Alive! It's Huge! (5:51) looks at the design of the film's creature (which is supposedly a baby, which has me wondering what colossus could have possibly birthed it), while Clover Fun (3:57) offers the usual collection of flubs and bloopers (amusing enough). Deleted Scenes (3:34) offers a quartet of axed bits ("Congrats, Rob", "When You're In Japan", "I Call That A Date" and "It's Going To Hurt") that are pretty easy to see why they were excised (although the bit about a partygoer inquiring if Rob can keep his eye out for some Japanese anime porn is pretty funny). Two Alternate Endings (4:34) simply offer slightly different versions of the film's final "flashback". Both the deleted scenes and alternate endings offer optional commentary by Reeves. Finally, there's the thankfully concise Previews menu (3:15) which offers the teaser trailer to Abrams' upcoming Star Trek prequel as well as Paramount's big summer '08 tent pole pic, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

Bottom Line
A film that transcends it's visual presentation gimmick through sheer force of will, Cloverfield is a relentlessly tense bit of monster movie mayhem. Not recommended for those afflicted with motion sickness (although seeing the film on a TV screen ought to lessen the overall sense of potential nausea), but for those hankering for some old-school Toho shenanigans given a up-to-date stylistic presentation, hang on for a wild ride.

		Cloverfield
4		Feature - A bit draggy in the opening party scenes, but when all hell breaks loose, the film moves.
4		Video - Intentionally blurry and amateurish... and that's just what the film needed.
4		Audio - Monster roars, gunfire, explosions, screams... all sound great.
4		Extras - An excellent commentary and some better-than-average featurettes flesh out a solid SE.

4