Cloverfield

Invasion movies have become a standard bearer for special effects. Whether it's War of the Worlds, Godzilla or Transformers, this genre provides enough playroom for effects artists, and they consistently deliver from the cutting edge. Add in a cunning marketing campaign that updates Independence Day's White House attack, and you have Cloverfield, a hotly anticipated movie despite a paucity of information. A mere glimpse of a 40-story-tall monster's backside proved to be enough to drive viewers en masse to theaters.

Despite this fervor, the conversation on Cloverfield starts and ends with its viewability. Director Matt Reeves, writer Drew Goddard and producer/ringmaster J.J. Abrams show us a monster crisis through a newly prolific lens: the YouTube/cell phone video/handicam perspective. You see it every day, whether it's a game-winning field goal or Saddam Hussein's execution; it's grainy, it's bouncy, and it's never going to be mistaken for professional footage. This victim's perspective (read: 9/11 from Ground Zero) tilts the film toward a sort of cinema vérité nouveau, aiming to acquaint us with the everyman's actual reactions to extraordinary situations.

This is a good concept in theory, but it turns out to be a ridiculous, nauseating medium to inflict upon your viewers. Almost everything is bouncy, even the opening scenes at a farewell party. Within five minutes, Cloverfield has dismissed the half of its audience that can't stomach such rockiness. It obviously summons upon The Blair Witch Project, but there, bouncy shots had meaning: The principals are running scared, and the viewer should be similarly alarmed. In Cloverfield, even the mundane scene-setting stuff is unsteady, and when you amp that up with the camera operator's terror at having the monster nearby, these most desired shots risk being totally inscrutable. By committing to this method, Cloverfield has to use narrative sleights-of-hand (a helicopter ride, a news report) for wider shots. That these are the finest parts of the film is testament to how successful the handicam approach isn't.

Furthermore, Cloverfield is a challenge because the handicam — and therefore the audience — is attached to these characters, a band of feckless Manhattanites that would be so callow as to continuously man the camera during an epic disaster. (Post-9/11 anxiety be damned! One dunderhead justifies this with, "People are gonna want to know how it all went down." How noble.) You pray in vain that these blokes throw themselves directly in the path of the monster so you can get a better look. One astonishing yet brief sequence puts them directly between the monster and approaching tanks, but for most of the movie, you track the troupe through rubble.

The monster itself is one way Cloverfield delivers, for sure. In hindsight, it strikes this viewer as amazing that people wondered aloud whether they'd ever see the monster or if it would stay hidden, a la Jaws, to amp up the terror even more. Who are we kidding? In this age of CGI, motion capture, Gollum, Dobby and ILM, the detail and artistry of digital effects are the new red badge of courage, put on display for all to see. (In this film, we have Tippett Studio to thank for their work.) The only spoilerless way to say it is: What a magnificent beast it is. Hopefully, the landlubbers will peek through their fingers in time to catch at least one money shot through all the visual turmoil. But then, Cloverfield rewards only the steeliest of stomachs, so good luck.

Monster movies aren't usually the deepest flicks, and Cloverfield boils down to basics: Watch these people escape from the big nasty in 85 minutes. Try to squeeze out some discourse: Does this perspective reflect how we wanted to process 9/11? Which of our fears does the monster represent? Would we be as aimless in a similar situation? Should we be concerned that our government is miraculously equipped to annihilate its largest city in just eight hours? Go ahead and have at it, philosophizers. (Some are certain there's even more material headed your way: Cloverfield 2.) For those of us for which this was an uncomfortable, untenable viewing experience, for whom the filmmakers make no concessions, the only question is this: How are we supposed to enjoy a movie when we can't even watch it?