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It's like the Blair Witch Project with a better CG budget
Cloverfield, for the most part, was an updated and slightly better version of the 1999 "horror" film, The Blair Witch Project. Almost a decade later, director J.J. Abrams apparently thought audiences were ready for the "shaky camera" style filming again.
Following the same formula as its predecessor, Cloverfield allows the audience to, from a first-hand perspective, take part in an attack on New York City by some unknown force. This is, of course, done entirely through the view of a handheld camera, which allows the casual viewers to feel like they're running, stumbling, and otherwise clumsily moving through the streets of New York while the incident is occurring all around them.
WARNING: Cloverfield is not for anyone that gets motion sick easily, or at all.
The handheld camera in question is being toted around, not by a hardened military soldier or even a news reporter, but by some mouthy, seemingly mentally challenged young man who's following his friends around because, and here's where the plot supposedly comes into play, his best friend wants to find and rescue the girl he loves from this attack.
Now I'm not sure about the normal person but when some unseen monster/force/whatever is assailing a major metropolitan city, my first instinct is to GET THE HELL OUT and not save my heartbroken girlfriend. Now, I'm not saying this isn't a viable option for a plot, but it's far too unrealistic for my tastes and the extremes that these people go through to rescue this girl are unimaginable (case in point, they scale a large skyscraper so they can jump to the roof of the OTHER skyscraper that happens to be leaning against it). I don't want to go as far as to offer the cliched "We need to find a safe route out of this city" plot, but it would've been far more believable than what was presented.
Plot aside, Cloverfield took several steps away from it's grainy, 1999 ancestor and actually utilizes the handheld camera in a couple of unique ways. First, the fact that the camera cuts in and out occasionally, giving the audience "skips" in the actual real-time events. This was obviously put in to keep the film from getting boring when the characters were, say, walking up several hundred flights of stairs, or, maybe, getting lost for an hour or so in New York's vast subway system. Nonetheless, the "breaks" in filming kept the action going despite the fact they were clearly put in to do just that.
The other unique utilization of the handheld camera was how, during the aforementioned "breaks" in the real time events, occasionally the audience was treated to a snippet of the video that is being taped OVER. Specifically, the main character and the woman he's trying to rescue prior to New York becoming a giant monster's playground. This adds a level of realism to the way the film is presented.
Cloverfield's graphics were another clear step up from The Blair Witch Project (and please don't berate me with "Blair Witch wasn't meant to be graphically enhanced" garbage). The best example of this is, without a question, the monster itself. I won't reveal too much regarding this creature, but suffice to say it is quite a site to see. And speaking of the monster, Abrams and his team does a fantastic job of crafting a creature so unique and unusual in appearance that it keeps the audience guessing about its origins. I recall leaving the theater with my large group of friends only to spend the next few hours debating about where the monster came from.
To be completely honest, Cloverfield was really an exercise in marketing. Abrams and his crew, again, did a fantastic job of building up untold amounts of hype about this movie, through clever use of the "teaser" trailers and lack of a title for several months. The marketing department did their job and did their job well, creating enough buzz surrounding this mystery movie to draw audiences in.
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