Plenty of thrills to be found in "Cloverfield"

Cloverfield" arrives in theaters more marketing phenomenon than movie, a "Blair Godzilla Project" built on an unknown cast, "found video," a little-seen monster and a lot of hype.

Though this secretive, low-budget monster-munches-Manhattan thriller is entertaining enough to make Steven Spielberg smack his head and go, "That's how I should've done 'War of the Worlds,' " it amounts to mostly smoke and mirrors.

It is a tribute to the cult of J.J. Abrams of TV's "Lost," the last "Mission: Impossible" movie and the upcoming "Star Trek: The J.J. Generation" (whose trailer is attached to "Cloverfield") that this high-concept "Godzilla" riff has the buzz that it does. A street-level, panicked person's point of view is a great way to tell this story, very post-Sept. 11. But don't feel alone if, after its 80 or so camera-shaking, monster movie mash-up minutes, you're wondering, "Is that it?"

The found video here is a government tape for "Case Designate Cloverfield." Something bad happened in Manhattan. This tape, from the golden age of the camcorder, is one of many that documented that event. We see it, unedited, a home movie of a failed love affair, a "sayonara" party to 30ish Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and the Thing that Interrupted Rob's Party.

One of the sly, perhaps unintended subtexts of "Blair Witch" was its commentary on a naive, media-saturated generation more at home looking at a screen than experiencing the real world. In "Cloverfield," they've grown older, but not up. They stop in the midst of this horrific moment to take cell-phone snaps of the Statue of Liberty's skull, relocated to a street in Manhattan. They dash for safety, until their cell rings.And through it all, Hud keeps that camera rolling, capturing the panic, the confusion, the end of the Empire State building, New York looters, the Army's arrival, the mass evacuation of Manhattan, and glimpses of "this terrible thing" that is doing this.

Buildings fall, bombers bomb, the deafening chaos of battle surrounds them -- and the camera keeps rolling. "People are gonna want to know how it all went down," he says. Yes, it does remind you of raw Sept. 11 footage.

The partygoers' camcorder point of view limits who we're exposed to, thus Manhattan seems strangely stripped of older, less gorgeous people. The unknown cast is so unknown (save for the odd TV credit or supporting part in "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants") that it lends the film a TV-news-footage veracity.

But there's a reason Ridley Scott cast Yaphet Kotto, Vanessa Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton and company in "Alien." We sympathize with the plight of these young lives interrupted in "Cloverfield." We don't empathize with them.

Director Matt Reeves and writer Drew Goddard are getting little credit for the movie, which is appropriate, since it's the concept that matters here. Monster-movie conventions by the score clutter the film. How many times have we seen rats fleeing the subways because they know something's coming up behind our heroes?

But it's still a jolt to the genre. The camera tumbles, the smoke billows, gigantic footsteps thunk, women shriek and the car alarms blare. And we are there, right in the middle.