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By Troy Doney

You've sort of seen the previews. You've been tantalized by brief glimpses of a huge, unearthly beast going on a self-guided tour of New York. You've seen the head of the Statue of Liberty roll into the street. If you're wondering if you should see the rest of "Cloverfield," I can tell you this much now: Do it. But you're still not going to get the entire experience.

A discussion of the plot seems almost detracting from the movie itself. Simply put, a horrendous beast of colossal scope surfaces outside of Brooklyn and starts putting the boots to the city and its teeth to the populace. You watch through a digital camcorder of a small group of survivors as they weave their way through an unending series of horrors, large and small.

Matt Reeves, formerly of five episodes of the TV series "Felicity," directed "Cloverfield." Done entirely in shaky, digital camera style, I found myself amazed at how unprofessional yet precise the filming was. The camera work looks very much like it was done by a frightened person running for his or her life. It's jumpy, has a habit of going out of focus and finds itself often looking away from the center of attention.

Yet, it subtly finds its way to those important moments. It lingers just long enough on glimpses of the beast, bits and pieces of charging military and switches function at just the right times in the dark and over long distances. You're convinced that this is a regular person with no directorial training holding the camera, yet you miss nothing that would make the experience anything less than awesome.

A tip of the hat also goes to the clever method in which the movie handles flashbacks. Occasionally, the tape will transition into the video that it's recording over, lending a bit of back story and an appreciation of just how quiet and simple things were before the screaming started.

"Cloverfield" isn't just a movie about a huge beast destroying New York. Yes, there's a giant monster. Yes, the Big Apple gets routed almost continuously. Yes, there are dog-sized crab-spiders running through Brooklyn savaging the locals. Yes, there's the military unloading massive amounts of munitions on anything that looks not-human. "Cloverfield" only contains these elements. At its heart, "Cloverfield" is a drama; it's about how people connect and react with one another (and to giant carnivorous behemoths).

The actors involved fired on all cylinders. A cast of relative unknowns, they made themselves seem impossibly human. At no moment was the reality shattered by impossible altruism. The small moments of helping your fellow man seemed to be almost automatic decisions, as if it weren't even a question of helping someone in need.

The protagonist, Rob Hawkins, is well-realized by Michael Stahl-David. Very human, he's doing everything he can to survive in this hellish landscape and still manage to find the one person who matters most to him.

The camera man (and co-protagonist), Hud, played by T.J. Hawkins, is a nice foil to the Sturm und Drang of the movie, chiming in with appropriate and inappropriate moments of humor and gallows humor throughout the movie.

Relating the entire cast beyond this point would be repetitive, as all involved did fantastically. Rarely do all involved in these kinds of movies make you actually believe and feel their fear, frustration, elation and desperation. While it seems a disservice to not mention them, there is still much of a review to get through.

One of the things that must be mentioned is that this isn't a monster movie like the ones that you've seen before. The unnamed monster isn't presented like oversize beasties of yore. This isn't Godzilla or King Kong. You're not expected to empathize with or find a personality in the monster. It's more of an event, a tragedy given physical form. It's something that everyone reacts to. As previously stated, this isn't a monster movie. It's a drama with a monster movie attached to it.

"Cloverfield" is highly enjoyable, the apex of the shaky cam post-postmodern (yes, that's POST-postmodern) filmmaking that burst into the public consciousness with "The Blair Witch Project." But it surpasses "The Blair Witch Project" in terms of the scope and emotional connection that one feels. Whereas "The Blair Witch Project" wore you down with suspense and tension, "Cloverfield" breaks you down with fear, despair, adrenaline and the horrible realization that the best you can hope for is to die relatively quickly next to the ones you love as some prehistoric beast enthusiastically levels everything in sight.

"Cloverfield" is more than just an 85-minute movie, mind you. "Cloverfield" is the main part of a unique multimedia presentation that is referred to by names like Alternate Reality Gaming and Viral Marketing. Besides the main "Cloverfield" Web site, multiple other sites were created to market the movie in unconventional methods, like Ethan Haas Was Right. Even a soft drink, Slusho, was a part of the unorthodox marketing machine.

Slusho has its own Web site, which one might assume is just the creators going overboard trying to give the movie some kind of meta-fiction legitimacy. Rather, it leads nicely into the other asymmetric storytelling method involved with "Cloverfield:" Alternate Reality Gaming. Using mediums such as text messaging, e-mail and social networks, the creative minds behind "Cloverfield" were able to flesh out the experience of, and create a deeper interaction with, the narrative of "Cloverfield." Slusho is a soft drink subsidiary of the fictional Japanese corporation Tagruato, which the protagonist is hired by and is also apparently accidentally responsible for the wake-up call that the titular titan receives.

There's a plethora of related and official meta-storytelling devices that involve "Cloverfield," ranging from an anti-corporate grassroots organization that opposes Tagruato known as T.I.D.O. Wave, official extra videos recounting the experiences of others involved in the event (Google "Cloverfield files"), a "private" Web site between two of the films characters with several videos (jamieandteddy.com, password: jllovesth), an online encyclopedia (cloverfield.wikia.com), a manga tie-in and yes, even MySpace profiles and blogs for the major characters.

What does all of this mean? Does this add to the movie, or detract from it? It depends. Did you come to "Cloverfield" strictly for the explosions, pink mist, beasties and screams? Or are you willing to round out the experience of the film and spend a few hours idly clicking away on the MySpace profiles of people who don't exist? It doesn't cost you any money to enjoy these asymmetric fiction narratives and devices; if anything, it can broaden the experience of what is essentially a drama.

"Cloverfield" is a one-of-a-kind movie, an experience that isn't easily replicable. You experience the terror of living in the midst of a giant while doing everything you can to help those you care about. You can almost feel the impact of explosions and the tremors of oversize footsteps. "Cloverfield" is a movie that I highly recommend. I give it a four out of four frybreads, reznet's highest rating.

Troy Doney, Fort Belknap Assiniboine, attended the University of Montana in Missoula and is a graduate of the Freedom Forum's American Indian Journalism Institute. Last summer, Doney interned as a copy editor at the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times.