Now that half of the civilised world has seen the movie we're all now completely engrossed in the opinionated analytical aftermath. For the three people out there who've been on a long camping trip and wonder what the film itself is like, here's the synopsis described in algebraic terms.
Cloverfield = Blair Witch Project + Godzilla + a huge sfx budget. That's it. Don't look for anything deeper; it isn't there. Now, you could very well talk about the courage of using a single unwavering viewpoint for the entire film; something that could very easily have spoiled the whole experience and it did actually work well - to a point.

If you've been asleep for the last few years you won't have heard of JJ Abrams and are blissfully unaware of the havoc the man has created. The rest of us have ground our teeth through several movies that had the potential to be great but were completely ruined by the man's addiction to hand-held camera-work. I have a theory about this: either he saw The War Of The Worlds as an impressionable child and developed a pathological fear of anything that looked like a tripod, or he's allergic to aluminium. What other reasons could he possibly have for not leaving the camera in a fixed position for more than 3 seconds at a time? Let's be honest: The Bourne Ultimatum would have been dynamic enough if all the movement had been created by Matt Damon's antics, we didn't need the camera to be operated by a man suffering from Parkinson's disease. The deliberately shaky and amateurish camera-work of films like Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project do heighten the sense of tension and panic that power the films along but they have the unfortunate side-effect of evoking motion sickness in anyone who's recently eaten popcorn or chocolate - not great for the cinema-going public.

Seriously though, the real problem with this style of movie is that there's no comfortable middle ground: either it grabs you and you get it, or it doesn't and you don't. I didn't.