Cloverfield (2008)

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A lot of people are calling "Cloverfield" a reinvention of the giant monster genre, but to my eye that's somewhat misleading. What producer J.J. Abrams, director Matt Reeves, and writer Drew Goddard have done is turn back the clock to one of the genre's most important pieces: Director Ishiro Honda's Gojira (better known as Godzilla).

That film (unlike what the genre has become) was a true horror show with a bleak tone, giving a fantastical form to Japan's anxieties due to the Atomic attacks on their soil. Now, at the turn of the century, America is still reeling from both 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina – and as such, we also have transformed our collective terror into a movie monster. Cloverfield's tone is not one of summer escapism as one would expect, but one of claustrophobic horror. A tone I feel might not go down well with the masses, despite how much it enhances the film.

This isn't a movie that will go down easy for all. It doesn't even explain where its leviathan comes from - it doesn't need too. It's not about the muscle-bound soldiers or egghead scientists that are normally the heroes in these films. This is a movie about the crowds running from "Godzilla", and what it would ...

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