Cloverfield has an indecipherable title, no-name actors, and a no-name director. About the only person of note involved was JJ Abrams, and since I don’t watch Lost, that’s not exactly the strongest pedigree. The premise is one that’s been done dozens of times before, and the shaky-cam thing has a history of not working.

So the genius of Cloverfield isn’t in the cast or crew, or the plot -it’s in the execution. And it is a monster movie executed brilliantly, though not perfectly. It’s short, clocking at around an hour and a half, and I wished it had been longer, but it’s tight, and doesn’t drag at all. The cameraman - the one supposedly shooting the footage - is hilarious in a gallows humor kind of way.

Spoilers after the jump, because this is sort of movie that’s a lot better when you go in blind.

Two things bug me about Cloverfield. One, it has the single worst “don’t go in there” moment I have ever seen in a movie, which consists of the major characters climbing a 60-story building and jumping from the roof onto a similarly-sized but broken and tilting over building, which they then climb down inside. All this, to rescue one person.

Two, there’s a scene where the monster sneaks up on the characters, which is a bit like being snuck up on by a factory. A factory that’s currently active and filled with churning machinery.

That said, it’s a good movie. The titular monster isn’t a clear rip-off of anything, which is a depressingly uncommon thing to be able to say, the movie doesn’t ruin the mystery of it by showing it too obviously, and the special effects are solid throughout. Though I’m still not sure I grasp the exact geometry of the thing, so maybe they overdid that a bit.

The other interesting twist on the creatures is that the 30-story Lovecraftian horror, which seems to be a fairly clumsy attacker of anything smaller than a house, runs around dropping zerglings of some sort, which are small and quick enough to pose a threat to people in areas the monster can’t reach. It’s a nice way to subvert the usual “why don’t they just hide from the damned thing?” reaction.

Also, Cloverfield suffers a bit from the way it’s shot. Not the shaky cam, because I can deal with that, but the fact that if this really were “found footage” the way it’s presented, I don’t buy that a person would shoot the things that were shot. The conceit of the cameraman’s point of view is that you’re seeing what the person saw, but you’re really not. So you have to accept that the camera has a huge battery and a lot of tape, and that the guy never takes the stupid thing away from his face, even when there’s a giant monster trying to eat him, or a tank shooting very close to him, or he’s climbing down the side of a building. That, and you have one or two obligatory shots where the camera’s on the ground and you can’t see anything.

It doesn’t drag me out of the movie, but it certainly isn’t as immersive as it’s supposed to be, either. It’s just a bit of a stretch to thing that anyone would, or could, essentially attach a camera to their face for the duration of the attack.

That’s a lot of complaining, but it’s worth pointing out that Cloverfield is genuinely good - the monster, and the parasites in particular, are inventive takes on an old idea, the handheld look really works, and the smashed up New York city is visually impressive - easily upping the standard I Am Legend just set.

The characters aren’t too terribly stupid, which a lot of people in horror movies tend to be, and the mostly-implied style of storytelling works very well for this sort of movie - it’s neat to see some normal people, who have no fucking idea what’s happening while their city gets crushed, instead of elite military commandos or literally unbelievably well-informed citizens. What you know about what’s happening is based on what the characters see, and there’s very little in the way of exposition. What there is, you get from TV news, or having to figure out by watching.

Since I’m already plastering spoilers all over the place, I want to point out that the ending is a ten-ton punch in the gut. I can’t say I didn’t somewhat see it coming (everyone dies, and the monster doesn’t), but it’s still awesome.

Cloverfield is pretty good. Go freaking see it.