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.
Maybe we now live in a world where we record the moment first and feel it later. If that's the case, Cloverfield leaves us waiting to feel.
– Stephanie Zacharek,
Salon.com,
18 Jan 2008
fresh:
The fleeting, incomplete glimpses of the monster early on prove the old dictum of B-movie auteur Val Lewton that a momentary image can have greater impact than a prolonged one.
– J. R. Jones,
Chicago Reader,
22 Jan 2008
rotten:
Under the modern flummery, behind the faux amateurism and the handheld shudder, Cloverfield is a vastly old-fashioned piece of work, creaking with hilarious contrivance.
– Anthony Lane,
New Yorker,
22 Jan 2008
fresh:
I had a lot of fun with this inside-out take on the monster movie.
– Richard Roeper,
Ebert & Roeper,
22 Jan 2008
fresh:
The mechanism is the message in Cloverfield, a movie so aluminum-sleek, ultra-portable, and itsy-bitsy sexy, it's amazing Steve Jobs didn't pull it out of an envelope at Macworld.