Less than monstrous.(FILM)('Cloverfield')(Movie review)

IF the name "Cloverfield" meant nothing in particular to you as of the first of this year--if it sounded like a shampoo, perhaps, or a new brand of imitation butter--then you are obviously not an American (okay, a male American) between the ages of 12 and 34 and in possession of a high-speed Internet connection. The latest production from J. J. Abrams, a Hollywood whiz kid with a talent for facile entertainments that give off the illusion of great depth (his next project, appropriately enough, is a revival of the Star Trek franchise), Cloverfield was sold to its target demographic primarily via a canny viral marketing campaign, in which fake websites containing clues to the movie's plot were layered atop deliberately cryptic trailers, and the premise of the film was held as a closely guarded secret. What was allowed to slip out suggested The Blair Witch Project crossbred with Godzilla: still frames of dust-drowned streets and sinking oil tankers, a one-sheet showing a headless Lady Liberty standing guard over a burning New York with the tagline "Something Has Found Us," and snippets of handheld video in which that mysterious Something interrupts hip young things celebrating a raucous Manhattan going-away party.

Sure enough, The Blair Godzilla Project is exactly what the film turns out to be. Cloverfield's 84 vertiginous minutes purport to be the property of the U.S. military, having been "recovered from incident site US-447 (formerly known as Central Park)." The hip young things' party--held in honor of Rob (Michael Stahl-David), a scruffily handsome twentysomething on his way off to a plum new job in Japan--is the reason for the tape's existence: Rob's best friend, Hud (T. J. Miller), a cheery doofus who spends most of the movie as a disembodied voice behind the camera, has been assigned to record going-away testimonials, and as he circles the party we're introduced to Rob's brother Jason (Mike Vogel), Jason's girlfriend, Lily (Jessica Lucas), Hud's crush Marlena (Lizzy Caplan), and the darkly gorgeous Beth (Odette Yustman), who used to be Rob's best friend until they slept together and things got complicated. Indeed, Hud is taping over a video of their last happy day together--a sun-drenched trip to Coney Island, which survives in interstitial snatches, an idyllic counterpoint to the larger horror.

That horror shows up about 20 minutes in, shortly after Beth appears at the party with another guy on her arm, feuds with Rob, and then bolts, her date in tow. With no warning, the ground rumbles, flames spurt from the financial district, the Statue of Liberty's head comes bouncing uptown, and the Woolworth Building gets leveled. "Is it the terrorists?" someone shouts, but the audience knows better, having caught a glimpse, through our camcorder's-eye view, of something large and scaly slouching through the downtown canyons.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

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