J.J Abrams and Matt Reeves have proven that they are great team in their premiere film Cloverfield.
Cloverfield is Matt Reeves' first film and with help from J.J. Abrams that they brought back the monster film in good form.
The movie is set in modern-day New York City with a guy named Rob who has been promoted to a lucretive position of Vice President for a company in Japan. His brother Jason and his friends Lily, Marlena and Hud have a going away party for him. All of the suddenly all hell breaks loose with an earthquake and a mysterious roar; we quickly see the race for survival of not only Rob and his friends, but for the entire city from large creature.
It is clear that both Reeves' and Abrams' borrowed aspects from real events such as September 11th; and from other films such as Godzilla, for the monster; Alien, for the little creatures; Blair Witch Project, for the camera point-of-view filming. But they put it together in such a way that all elements are balanced and have added both psychological and visual scares in the mix. Many attempts at this type of balance in previous films have failed until now.
An example of this from Cloverfield would be that not all the scenes involve all the characters. The only constant character is the camera itself. There are scenes in which you see part of the creature (a bit of tease added by the director) or scenes of military fighting the creatures. Another example would be of a scene in total darkness and you hear the footsteps of the creature or of the fighting, which adds to the psychological build up for the end.
However in the beginning you do have character build up to the point that you actually do have a feel to them and you actually begin to care of what happens to them. In previous films this has been tried, but not to the degree that Cloverfield presents.
I will admit that I don't scare easily. This film actually scared me. It surprised me in ways that a film has not done so in some time. If you have not gone to see it. I do recommend it.