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Hud (T.J. Miller, center) videotapes Jason (Mike Vogel) and Rob (Michael Stahl-David) at a going-away party.

The apocalyptic monster-on-the-loose movie Cloverfield roars into theaters riding a buzz fueled by the name of its producer J.J. Abrams (of Lost and Alias fame), its top secret production and by far one of the shrewdest viral marketing strategies since The Blair Witch Project. Comparisons with the latter are inevitable, considering how Cloverfield is presented entirely as found footage. The all-handheld video is shot by a Manhattan 20-something before, during and after a downtown going-away party that morphs into a full-on nightmare when an apparently indestructible creature brings awe-inspiring chaos, panic and destruction to the city. Even when the movie's logic more than occasionally goes haywire, the herky-jerky camera and you-are-there approach of director Matt Reeves (a creator of TV's Felicity) and the improvisational feel of Drew Goddard's screenplay pack an immediacy and a wallop.

Military troops escort Lily (Jessica Lucas), Marlena (Lizzy Caplan), Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Hud (T.J. Miller) to safety.

What also works well in making the movie so convincingly documentary-like is the casting of relative unknowns (Michael Stahl-David, Mike Vogel, Jessica Lucas, Odette Yustman, T.J. Miller, Lizzy Caplan). Images of terrified people hurtling through city canyons and the decimation of familiar landmarks can't help but evoke 9/11. But as the young cast struggles to survive and outwit the towering, rampaging beast, we are back in old school movie monster territory on the order of Godzilla, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Them! and It Came From Beneath the Sea as well as modern contenders like The Mist, the terrific Korean film The Host and Spielberg's version of War of the Worlds. Several of the sequences, especially a kick-ass chase through New York's eerily abandoned subway tunnels, are scary enough to lift anyone right out of their seat, mostly because the moviemakers are canny enough to know that, even with its terrific special effects, things we barely glimpse are far more frightening than any in-your-face horror could ever be. Does Cloverfield live up to its hype? Yes, mostly, because it's smart, sharp, scary and, for most of its 78-minute running time, an absolute blast.

by Stephen Rebello

Sam Emerson/©2008 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.