Paul Pritchard (expatpaul)

Cloverfield is based on the brilliantly simple idea that you can shoot an entire monster movie - Blair Witch style - from a single camcorder. The result is made of awesome. Starting with a going-away party, which justifies the running camera, something goes boom and the rest of the film is a solid adrenaline rush all the way.

There is a surprisingly well plotted story under all the screaming and shaky camera work, as well as some well drawn characters. All of this is very carefully revealed within the 'found footage' conceit of the film and comes together in a way that is both very effective and avoids drawing attention to the cleverness of the scriptwriting.

Cloverfield is an all-round, damn good disaster movie.

On the face of it, this film has no likeable characters and a black humour that is often sick. But the lead characters, Durango and Dolorossa, are treated sympathetically and their characters do develop as the film progresses so that you find yourself really caring what happens and, at the end of the day, that's what matters.