Review: "Cloverfield"

At about the ¾ mark in “Cloverfield,” one of the surviving characters—bloodied and frazzled--mutters “I don’t feel so good.”

I know exactly how she feels, because after 84 minutes of “Cloverfield’s” hand-held mania I was praying for Maalox.

But let’s backtrack a moment…

Written by Drew Goddard (“Buffy,” “Angel,” “Lost”), “Cloverfield” begins innocuously enough—after the DOD warning--with a young, post-coital couple named Rob and Beth (Mike Vogel and Odette Yustman) filming plans for an upcoming day at Coney Island. Other scenes that follow then cover the two running around New York, followed (several days later) by Rob's brother and girlfriend Lily (Mike Vogel and Jessica Lucas) planning a farewell party for Rob, who is due to leave for a new job in Japan.

That evening, as Jason asks his friend Hub (well played by T.J. Miller) to video farewell messages for Rob to watch while overseas, their apartment is jolted by what is believed to be an earthquake (although terrorism, while never explicitly mentioned, seems possible too). Heading to the roof to investigate, Hub then films a massive fireball blooming in midtown Manhattan.

The rest of “Cloverfield” is pretty much a raging panic from there, which I suppose is appropriate if its goal is to simulate a huge, lumbering monster ransacking New York from the POV of those underfoot.

If so, mission accomplished.

Unfortunately, so much of “Cloverfield” is nigh-unwatchable due to the frantic hand-held camera (funny how the batteries never die) rolling as a Brooklyn Bridge full of evacuees is smashed, and Rob treks uptown to find his girlfriend. Equally as gut-wrenching is Rob’s pal Hub, who shuts up for no more than two seconds throughout “Cloverfield,” babbling about events around him, or badly hitting on his would-be girlfriend roaming the city with the rest of the group.

As for the monster’s origins, that is wisely never revealed. After all, how would Lily or Rob know what it was – unless a calm, helpful scientist appeared to explain it all as in a thousand other creature invasion flicks. It also seems appropriate that the military’s counterstrike on the monster is as confused as anything else in “Cloverfield"; how or when do you prep an army for such a thing?

So in this respect, despite its nausea-cam and screaming college kids, “Cloverfield” (along with late 2007’s very similar invasion pic “The Mist”) is among the more realistic fantasies to come down the pike in a while.

Still, I won’t be seeing it again – or at least not on anything close to a full stomach.