Marketing movies is a tricky art to master. Once a studio starts messing with the heads of the masses, going outside the realm of your standard meat-and-potatoes trailers, will the moviegoing public catch the point? For example, the campaign behind Cloverfield featured a storyline shrouded in secrecy, teaser trailers as vague as they come, and the title not even pinned down for sure until a few weeks before the film's release. With luck, movie fans will let whatever confusion they have about Cloverfield slide and welcome it with open arms as one of the freakiest cinematic rides in quite a while.

Filmed entirely via digital camcorder, Cloverfield takes place primarily on the night a going-away party is being thrown for twentysomething Rob (Michael Stahl-David) before he heads off to a cushy new job in Japan. Then out of nowhere, the unthinkable hits New York City in a big way. After what seems like an earthquake rocks the island of Manhattan, the real source of the commotion reveals itself to be a towering, lizard-like monster who proceeds to go on a destructive rampage throughout the island. Rob and a handful of other party guests, including his brother (Mike Vogel) and a buddy (T.J. Miller), document the whole thing on camera and barely make it out of the initial assault with their lives, taking swift refuge in the subway. They hope the military will take care of things, but once the unsettling notion that the monster's attack is far from over, Rob and his small band of fellow survivors take it upon themselves to venture out into the fray in order to rescue Rob's former flame (Odette Yustman) and still make it out of Manhattan alive.

In describing Cloverfield, the first thing that comes to mind is The Blair Witch and its first-person perspective. What the latter film did for urban legends and ghost stories, the former does for a more Godzillaesque scenario, capturing the carnage from the point-of-view of those the big G is usually stepping on rather than focusing on some dude in a rubber suit. Of course, the premise was done much more creepily and effectively when Blair Witch first hit the scene, but Cloverfield does a pretty harrowing job of fitting it to a different set of goals. Were this a traditional Hollywood blockbuster, Cloverfield would center around an extensive cast of characters we wouldn't care about, get served up with a paper-thin explanation behind the monster's origins, and have two-thirds of the movie center around headache-inducing scenes of stuff blowing up. What director Matt Reeves and crew do here, however, is take a much more "real world" approach to a situation that's out of this world.

The entire film works because of an ominpresent sense of freshness; there are no real familiar faces, no wide array of roles to thinly spread the viewer's sympathy among, and a pretty set agenda the story sticks to.  Cloverfield ultimately succeeds because of its personal edge, as you get to know this tight-knit group of friends sticking together under the most unbelievable circumstances of their lives. It also helps that on a budget of just around 30 million dollars, the damage these filmmakers deal to Manhattan looks mighty impressive, working on levels of both pure spectacle (the Statue of Liberty's head rolling down the street is a money shot if I've ever seen one) and as harrowing drama. Some of the story's driving mechanics are a little creaky (essentially, Rob wants to rescue a girl he seems to kinda, sorta, maybe have a thing for), and although the overall lack of knowledge often heightens the mystique of the monster (as well as the nasty little parasites that spring from it to cause more chaos), the same doesn't pan out as well for some of the finer details which would have been a big help to know.

As the screening of Cloverfield I attended came to a close, I heard some teeny-boppers whining and bemoaning that the movie was "sooooo stupid," presumably for not spoon-feeding them the exact details of what was going on every single step of the way. I'll admit that Cloverfield could have used a little bit of sprucing up here and there, but on the whole, I prefered being kept in the dark over getting a load of harebrained explanations dropped in my lap. Leave the goofball theories to the B-movies of the '50s; Cloverfield is a different sort of beast, and it's darn proud of it.

MY RATING: *** (out of ****)

(Released by Paramount Pictures and rated "PG-13" for violence, terror and disturbing images.)