Cloverfield

Aptly summed up by one wag as “Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project,” this highly touted horror/sci-fi hybrid is set in New York City, where a going-away party for yuppie Rob (Michael Stahl-David) turns into an orgy of terror following the sudden appearance of a gigantic creature—possibly of alien origin—that lumbers through the city streets and lays waste to huge swaths of high-priced Manhattan real estate. The story, such as it is, revolves around the partygoers' efforts to escape, captured on video by Ron's best friend, and consequently it's this first-person approach to the storytelling that lends Cloverfield a sense of immediacy that makes the outlandish yarn more believable, and thus more compelling. Director Matt Reeves rates kudos for his superb staging of the attack and its confusing aftermath, which finds hurriedly deployed military personnel attempting to mount a retaliation effort while evacuating the entire borough. Still, more discriminating viewers will be put off by the film's one glaring weakness: insufficient characterization of the principals (which may admittedly have been an unavoidable result of Cloverfield's on-the-fly narrative structure). A strong optional purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Matt Reeves, the 28-minute “making-of” featurette “Document 1.18.08,” a 22-minute visual effects featurette, “I Saw It! It's Alive! It's Huge!” creature featurette (6 min.), four minutes of “Clover Fun” outtakes, four deleted scenes with optional commentary (4 min.), two alternate endings with optional commentary (4 min.), and trailers. The Blu-ray exclusive feature is a “Special Investigation Mode” which shrinks the film and presents a map of the action and pop-up facts about the film with “GPS Tracker,” “Creature Radar,” “Military Intelligence” and more. Bottom line: a fine extras package for a better-than-average horror flick.] (E. Hulse)