Judging a creature feature by the standards of an ordinary movie is just plain silly, because creature features are usually entertaining for completely different reasons. The whole essence of a creature feature is that it's a spectacle. That's why it's generally the only kind of movie you can count on Hollywood to do reasonably well with. Hollywood's primary skill-set is defined by the spectacle, and they get better at it every time the technology improves. That's why it makes a lot of sense to remake a movie like “King Kong” every time a new set of bigger and better special effects becomes available, even though it makes no sense at all to remake a classic like “Psycho.”

“Cloverfield” is not a remake of any of the classic creature features, but it's in the same spirit. It's also tremendously more effective at what it's trying to do. And how could it not be? When a giant fictional monster destroys a giant fictional city, it's obviously going to be a bigger and better spectacle the more visually realistic the whole thing looks. The original “Godzilla” was a cool movie, but the monster just didn't look even a little bit realistic and there was nothing they could do about it. The monster in “Cloverfield” appears only very briefly near the end- for most of the movie you only see its effects and its smaller progeny- but it looks pretty real, and the destruction it causes looks very real. That's all because of the special effects.

So when the critics say it's dumb- as a few of them have- they are just plain missing the point. “Cloverfield” was never intended to be an artistic masterpiece. It's a big monster smashing New York up. I mean, come on!