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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 31 January 2008

New York is plunged into a hysterical state of emergency in Cloverfield

Clover and out for US in handy style

CLOVERFIELD
Directed by MATT REEVES
Certificate 15

HAND-held cameras have long been used as a device for instilling terror into films – none more frightening than The Blair Witch Project, which scared the daylights out of me and left audiences both shaken and disturbed.
It’s fear of the unknown, of course, with dimly seen images up there on the screen and vague shapes on the periphery of our vision that we can only guess at to add to our unease.
But up to now no one has dared to broaden the canvas into a full-blooded mega-bucks disaster movie.
So full credit to director Matt Reeves and screenwriter Drew Goddard for their resourcefulness in showing the wholesale destruction of Manhattan through a student’s amateur jumpy video camera – and just about getting away with it.
On one level this is amazing, eye-boggling stuff.
The story, as these things do, begins innocently enough with a going-away party for Rob (Michael Stahl-David) in a New York apartment filmed by his brother (TJ Miller) with the usual embarrassed inanities from tipsy guests as they find themselves in the video spotlight while knocking back vodka-pops or swallowing pills.
Then all the lights go out.
Something very big and very nasty has surfaced in the harbour half a mile away, sinking a freighter and causing havoc as it pulverises the city.
As the kids spill out into the street amid panic-stricken crowds, the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty comes crashing among them like a giant boulder – a brilliant moment, when we realise something really bad is going on. This is one invader taking no prisoners.
New York is under siege. Skyscrapers collapse and dust clouds roll through the streets in scenes eerily reminiscent of those dreadful scenes we all saw on 9/ll – surely an unnecessary addition we don’t need to see here.
“Whatever it is, it’s winning,” shouts the Marine commander as buildings topple and scuttling six-foot crabs leap on to the fleeing populace. That’s all they need to hear. We glimpse the sea monster as a writhing shape the size of a tower block through the jerky lens of the student’s camera as he keeps filming amid the carnage.
A pounding music track holds the hysteria at boiling point, helping to disguise the fact that this is really just another monster movie, served up with a different dressing.
All the disorientating jiggery-pokery camera work left me slightly unhinged, but you’ve got to hand it to them.
It’s scary, and it’s as real as it gets.

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