"Cloverfield" *** (out of four): By giving "Godzilla" the "Blair Witch" treatment, producer J.J. Abrams has created a monster movie for the YouTube generation, with impressive - if not entirely scary - results.

What hath YouTube wrought? In a world where nary a celebrity can leave the house pantsless without a hi-def MPEG appearing minutes later on the Internet, unstoppable über-producer J.J. Abrams has crafted a good old fashioned monster movie (he out-Gozillas that awful remake of "Godzilla") for this YouGeneration. Where other monster movies ("King Kong", "Godzilla", "King Kong vs. Godzilla") are told with an omniscient camera, able to see the creature from all angles, Mr. Abrams' "Cloverfield" - a spoiler-defying codename which became the film's actual moniker - dispenses with that option, opting to tell its tale from the vantage point of a single handheld camera (though it finds a few clever workarounds). Sounds like a gimmick, doesn't it? Well, it is. But it's a gimmick that's executed ingeniously by director Matt Reeves (of Mr. Abrams' "Felicity"). It may not be a scary movie, but it's downright impressive.

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