Rob’s (Michael Stahl-David) going away party is rudely interrupted when a giant monster begins destroying New York. The city erupts in chaos and panic, but Rob must find and rescue his true love Beth (Odette Yustman). Love apparently conquers fear in this one as Rob leads his small pack of friends through New York to Beth’s apartment. Rob saves Beth, but suffers more than enough loss in the process, as the monster manages to wipe out nearly the entire city, Rob’s friends included. Can Rob manage to get Beth out of the city to safety, or will the mass destruction that has overtaken the city eventually claim their lives as well?
This is one of the better ’monster attacks metropolis’ movies made. Despite working on a reasonably low budget, the visuals are startling, and impressive. The terror unfolds at an unforgiving rate, and Drew Goddard’s screenplay offers plenty of surprises and effective humor. Matt Reeves took the ’Blair Witch Project’ approach to the film, providing us with a first person/documentary perspective, and though the film is (quite literally) shaky, there’s a very surreal emotion created through the camera work.
An attractive young cast definitely rose to the occasion, as Rob, Hud (T.J Miller), and Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) are particularly believable characters. Though limited in their experience, this young ensemble passed the test with flying colors. It’s in fact, the humanity portrayed through their performances that really helps to add extra depth and realistic scares to the film.
Respect to Matt Reeves, Drew Goddard, J.J Abrams and the entire cast of Cloverfield. By making yet another mega monster movie, you flirted with potential disaster, and instead created a modern day monster masterpiece. Good work.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Cloverfield lives up to every bit of hype heaped upon it; this is one of the better monster movies to be released in recent memory.
