2008 Interesting

Cloverfield

A surreptitiously subversive, stylistically clever little gem of an entertainment disguised, under its deadpan-neutral title, as a dumb Gen-YouTube monster movie, makes the convincingly chilling argument that the world will end — or, at least, Manhattan will crumble — with a bang and a whimper. The bang part, as millions who have seen the trailer already know, is supplied by the...thing...that arises on an otherwise peaceful May night to wreak destruction on New York City: He (She? It?) swats at skyscrapers and smashes NYC landmarks, abetted by tentacled mini-monsters that lunge directly at humans like voracious paparazzi. And when the military arrives to fight back, let's just say the troops opt for the all-out surge approach.
The ineffectual whimper of a handful of nobodies caught in the melee, though, is what's new in the old Godzilla formula — and also what's blackly funny. The doomed Gotham created by producer J.J. Abrams — he with the golden Felicity, Alias, and Lost touch — and his team is almost entirely populated by vapid, twenty-something nincompoops. Oops, I mean attractive, indistinguishable young people who handle cell phones, DV cameras, etc., with ease; call one another ''dude''; don't have anything interesting to say; and, perhaps as a result, don't listen to one another, even in an emergency. (The first 20 minutes is a great swath of character-establishing partying, nothing more — a masterstroke of lovingly staged banality.) The acting, by a cast of unknown dudes and dudettes, is appropriately unmemorable. There is, however, a nice simulation of panic as the gang sees the Statue of Liberty's head roll down the street.