Just got back from seeing Cloverfield with
Pretty damn good — definitely Abrams’ exorcism of post-9/11 trauma, in the same way that Gojira was a reflection of the early-50s Japanese psyche.
The best thing about it is that the monster attack is really more of a background element — the focus of the tale is how a handful of New Yorkers deal with the chaos.
The whole thing is filmed, Blair Witch-style, as a found document, a hand-held camera recording. As such, there’s no score — although if you wait through the end credits, you are rewarded with a track called “Roar! (Cloverfield Overture)” by Michael Giacchino (who does pretty much all of J.J. Abrams’ music). It’s a brilliant pastiche of monster movie bombast — especially the classic Godzilla march. Once that sucker is available ANYWHERE, I’m grabbing it. I doubt there will be a soundtrack release, since it’s the only piece composed for the film, and the only music aside from some source music that appears in the first 10 minutes of the film during the going away party….but hopefully they think to release “Roar!” as a single on iTunes.
Good stuff.