So much anticipation in the beginning. And at the end, so much disappointment. Much like Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

Director Matt Reeves’s Cloverfield is similar to the Blair Witch Project, in that all the horror is shot from behind a hand-held video camera. Initially, it is quite effective. Creepy Hud Platt (T.J.Miller) records people’s testimonies for Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David), who is having a party before going off to Japan to start a new life and leave behind his beautiful ex-girlfriend (Odette Yustman). Hud Platt stalks a girl (Lizzy Caplan), pressurising her to speak to the camera; her discomfort creates a general feeling of unease.

It is all quite eerie; you sense a looming danger, without knowing what it is. Then Manhattan shakes. The News channels think it’s an earthquake. The party rushes outside, where rocks fly and clouds of dust swirl in the streets. The head of the Statue of Liberty falls (with obvious iconic intent) in front of the surviving members of Hawkins’s party.

A ridiculous Godzilla-like creature emerges, shoulder-barging high-rise flats and stamping on yellow cabs. Much of the rest of the film consists of Hawkins and his friends venturing forth to find his injured girlfriend, while attempting to keep out of the path of the dinosaur-hybrid and the copious amounts of little spider-like creatures it apparently breeds and sprinkles around like attack dogs.

Every so often the film cuts back to previous clips showing Hawkins and his girlfriend in more carefree times. But as their story becomes increasingly ridiculous, the vaguest sympathy one might have had for these characters disappears. Implausibility is heaped on implausibility. The group of survivors manages to get to the 50th floor of a slumped high-rise block to save the girlfriend, who, despite having had a metal bar stuck through her shoulder for hours on end, is quite capable not only of walking, but running when required. The helicopter which comes to the rescue is by happy chance right there at the end of the street, seemingly waiting just for them. When it is hit and plummets to the ground, they not only all survive, but find themselves in the middle of Central Park, with the monster looming over them. Its red ears expand and just before it rips into its prey, it adopts a dopey expression in what looks like a tacky and unnecessary attempt at humour.

There’s something seriously de trop about this film. Poor, much-battered Manhatten could so easily have been under siege from something which was at least half-way believable. Indeed could it not have depicted an actual terrorist attack, instead of attempting and failing to make comparisons with 9/11, comparisons which come over in this context as utterly tasteless?  As it stands, the total fantasy of Cloverfield makes no lasting impact- unless you count the throbbing headache you’re left with after following a hyperactive hand-held camera for an hour and a half.

Ryan Shorthouse is Research Assistant to David Willetts MP