Cloverfield is, quite simply, a scifi/horror Blair Witch Project, wrapped up in the shell of a Lost episode. Yet as good and entertaining as the movie is , what it says about current American culture is one of the bleakest things I’ve seen in a while and I saw No Country for Old Men, which looks like a Disney musical compared to Cloverfield.

In the movie, New York City is attacked by a giant monster and all hell breaks loose. We see the attack from the vantage point of a group of 20 year old friends, who are filming the attack as they first try to escape the city and then try to rescue one of their own. They don’t know what’s happening or why. No one does, not even the US military as it tries to kill the creature. There are no quick thinking scientists who have a theory where the monster came from or a cool and calm solider who’s determined to defeat menace. One minute people are enjoying a party, the next there’s the chaos and the terror of the unknown. And the characters seem to know it on some level. Though their world is reduced to nothing and they’re thrust into a situation they couldn’t have dreamed of, they take it relatively in stride, perhaps because deep down they know, as we all do, just how close the randomness of life and death can wreak havoc on us.