The story of CLOVERFIELD is irrelevant but revolves around the filming of the gigantic monster attack on NYC on video so that the audience can have a supposedly authentic real life thrill watching the film.  The main characters involved are Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and his girl (or ex-girl), Beth (Odette Yustman).  Rob is off to Japan and buddy, Hud (T.J. Miller) is recording a party on a cam before tremors occur.  More is offered to the audience as seen on the video but mostly just enough to keep audience anticipation going.

CLOVERFIELD has references to lots of old movies (which will delight movie fans) such as the classic giant monster Japanese movies (with the military uselessly called in), the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT in the generation of the film’s tension and even the old Paul Newman movie HUD in the girl/boy relationships.

At a running length of less than an hour and a half, CLOVERFIELD already feels too long and tedious.  The sounds and jittery images were getting more and more annoying and after a while, I did not bother to try to put further pieces of the story together.  The situation is worsened by the fact that the script does not bother to explain all the facts in detail.  From the opening shot of a video with the words CLOVERFIELD explaining it to be a government document of what has transpired at what was previously known as Central Park in NYC, the audience knows that this scene will be revisited.

What is most intriguing about CLOVERFIELD is the hype built around it.  Ever since a blurry trailer appeared last year, propelled by snips seen and popularized by the web, CLOVERFIELD has not attained such attention since THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.  The film is not bad but obviously cannot live to its grand expectations.  Similar horror movies released last year like THE HOST and THE MIST were more interesting.  Hopefully, there will be no sequel to CLOVERFIELD and a similar film will emerge no shorter than a period of 5 years.