Five young New Yorkers throw their friend a going-away party the night that a monster the size of a skyscraper descends upon the city. Told from the point of view of their video camera, the film is a document of their attempt to survive the most surreal, horrifying event of their lives.


It’s the movie no one knows anything about, but everyone wants to see. The question here is there anything worth watching behind Paramount’s consistently disappointing, overhyped viral marketing campaign? Well that’s one of the questions. The other one is: What the fuck is the thing that knocked off the Statue of Liberty’s head? At least we’re all done with wondering over the film’s title. Despite JJ Abrams’ promises to the contrary, they’re sticking with Cloverfield as the name on this would-be monster movie’s posters.

Hopefully, at some point in the film, we’ll actually see a monster. My real fear is that this isn’t the big monster destroys New York movie some seem to be hoping for, but rather something in the mold of Godzilla, where the large part of the film’s running time is spent on the ground with far less interesting, smaller attack creatures or some sort of stupid virus. Screw all that. Just give me giant freakin monsters knocking over giant freaking buildings and I’ll be happy. If the Toho company could do it in 1954 then JJ Abrams ought to be able to pull it off on January 18, 2008. And no JJ, we will not be happy if the monster is a little puff of black smoke. I don’t care if it can see into men’s souls.

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