Cloverfield

I liked this movie; chances are you've seen the Statue of Liberty trailer and are familiar with the premise.

An irate monster comes to Manhattan, picks a fight with the military and damages property. No explanation is given for the visitor during the film; the monster simply is.

But there's considerably more to the story; it's told through the viral marketing campaign. It turns out that this is a monster movie in the traditional sense; it's got a moral. A Japanese mining rig drills too deep. The monster pops out of a trench in the Atlantic, trashes the mining rig and heads East. Environmental misdeeds have doomed mankind.

Cloverfieldclues.com will get you the rest of it. They have video of the mining rig's collapse, as well as a translated Manga sent to Japanese audiences. There are MySpace pages for the principle characters. You also have Youtube clips of people who simply don't appear in the film as characters, but are vaguely related to the story. Blair Witch is a strong influence.

Again, I liked the movie. The effects are good, the monster is obnoxious and enjoys its work. Human cast members are less interesting, all model-perfect and under thirty. There's a tedious Dawson's Creek feel to their story, and whenever they get too heavy something interestingly horrible happens. If you ever wanted to see, for example, The O.C. get ravaged by a go-getter from the deep then we have a winner.