When a project as excessively hyped as Cloverfield appears on my radar, I approach it with enthusiasm, but a nagging voice always appears in the back of my mind that this movie may not be all it claims to be, and it may end up just like Spiderman 3 (a competent but ultimately dissapointing film) or I Am Legend (a movie that wouldn't be so bad if it hadn't completely missed the point of Richard Matheson's excellent novel).
Twenty minutes into the movie, and those voices shut up.
Cloverfield is a masterpiece. However, it is a very different sort of masterpiece than one usually comes to associate with the term. It tears down the rules of how to make a film, and builds its own. Some people may not be comfortable with...
#1: the wobbly camera,
#2: the lack of explanation for the monster, or
#3: the seeming banality of the acting.
These elements, in my opinion, actually add to the experience because...
#1: The unstable camera increases the sense of chaos, the feeling that a steady world is falling apart before our very eyes. Also, If you were there, trying to record the entire city of Manhattan crumbling under the siege of a giant monster, would you be able to keep the camera steady?
#2: The lack of explanation for the monster is also realistic, because if you were among the throngs of panicked New Yorkers, seeking a way out of the city (or, in the case of our protagonists, a trapped loved one) you probably wouldn't come across a scientist saying "Okay, people! This is what happened!" Furthermore, leaving such a question open to the viewer will keep people talking about the movie long after it has left theaters, much like the unknown contents of the suitcase in Pulp Fiction.
#3: The acting reinforces the notion that these are regular people, of the sort you might meet at a prom or college campus. You can't come in expecting the sonnets of Shakespeare from those people.
I feel that if Cloverfield was shot in a traditional (third-person) perspective, it would have diminished the film considerably because it would set up a barrier between the viewer and the events occurring onscreen. The viewer would be secure in his/her knowledge that he/she was stitting in a perfectly secure movie theater where the worst thing that could happen to you would be to step in something sticky. By shooting the film from a ground-level, first-person perspective, that barrier crumbles, and as death comes steamrolling down Times Square, every "Holy crap!!!" shouted by the characters becomes our own.
The only reason I am giving this movie a 9 instead of a 10 is because, as I said before, Cloverfield is not for everyone. Not every filmgoer (or said filmgoer's stomach) will be confortable with the unconventional direction Cloverfield takes in the making a movie. If you fall in that category, that's okay. There'll be plenty of other good movies coming out this year for you to watch. As for me, I give major Kudos to J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves for making the film Godzilla (1998) fervently wants to be.