The slow fade, a serial number…and the code name Cloverfield.

The screen then whites out to handheld camera and places the audience in a scene that could be taken from anyone’s lives.

Such a non-starter could sound a film’s early death but it seems that in producer J.J. Abrams (the man behind recent celebrity drenched series such as Alias and Lost), screenwriter Drew Goddard (a prolific Fox writer for Lost, Buffy & Angel) and director Matt Reeves’ amalgamated hands, the idea of normal people adrift in an unreal situation is one that the group loves to exploit - be it on the small-screen or in our theatres.

The name given to the project itself is so innocuous to remain purposely vague, even through the small glimpses of action that has led the film to be named the most secretive film of 2008.

In a cast of virtual unknowns, Michael Stahl-David, Lizzy Caplan and Jessica Lucas stand out as the actors/actresses neither reaching the point of their performances being unbelievable nor taking its indie sensibilities too lightly. Each provide a fleeting glimpse into the natural reactions of regular people thrown into an unexpectedly bizarre event.

The situation meanders slowly as we interrupt the lives of several new Yorkers, ironically one of which is escaping the city to leave for Japan, before a startling change in plot reveals a new problem on the horizon, and forces the group to move forwards with an ever increasingly desperate situation that lays to waste the city of New York (one of the first films to devastate the city so effectively and so quickly, to not allow the audience remember the tragic circumstances of real-life).

It quickly degrades into a deep social commentary of humanities own stubbornness to except the gravity of a life or death situation as many peripheral characters populating the background of the story adopt the standard idiotic spectators of any major disaster.

One particular scene as the head of the Statue of Liberty comes crashing through a building to grind to a rest on the street as soon as the dust clears; several members of the crowd immediately start to record the scene for posterity on their camera phones.

For a film that has its basis in a clichéd, contrived arena of entertainment, you can do little but sit back and enjoy its self-made universe where characters will do the near-impossible for their loved ones where reality would paint an entirely more realistic scene where each would be running for their lives.

It’s easy to step back and take it as pure run of the mill box office fodder but for those amongst us that want to take a deeper look at how the human race has evolved and their near-likely reaction to an incredible disaster, it proves equally as fascinating. So much was the promotion of the film that a sequel has already been pitched.