Cloverfield
Cloverfield is about as far away from a field of clover as you can get. As we find out during the ominous opening credits it’s the name assigned to a video found in the area formerly know as Central Park. What follows is the videography playback of a particularly bad night in the Big Apple as for a tense 88 minutes we get a cross between The Blair Witch Project and Godzilla. It starts with upwardly mobile twenty-something New Yorkers gathered at a Park Avenue suite for a farewell party honouring a friend whose new corporate vice-presidency will relocate him to Japan. While making video send-offs we see relationships unfold among the revellers but that’s soon overshadowed by the drama that suddenly explodes outside. A monster of no fixed origin manifests itself by the statue of Liberty and proceeds to deposit its ravenous young on the streets of Manhattan. The military are called in but as one commander puts it “we don’t know what it is but it’s winning”. New York is doomed and the only question remains will our departing VP be re-united with his true love before the military reins shock and awe down on the mysterious monster last seen in the area eventually known as Cloverfield.