Why is this good?

Spoken like a typical foreign national on Movie Chat. The film came out only seven years after 9/11, so WTF are you even talking about (the better part of a decade)? This "better part of a decade" crap is typical bull**** from someone trying very hard to sound like an authority about an event they know nothing about.

You're not only a foreigner who has no idea how deeply relevant 9/11 still was in 2008, you're obviously a kid, too. Kids have problems grasping cultural history; it's why you'd be dumb enough to argue that the movie came out so long after 9/11 that there couldn't have been a connection there. You weren't there, in other words, so you can only intellectualize.

"Cloverfield" succeeded, in part, because they shot it with an actual cine camera, a Sony F3, which had a 35mm-size sensor. So, they had a cinema-quality image to start with, then they worked on it in post production to make it look more like a camcorder.

It's beautifully paced, and knows when to hold the camera relatively steady so we can clearly see the "money shots" of the monster and the destruction. It was the best film writer Drew Goddard and director Matthew Reeves ever made. And, to me, it is the only good film that J.J. Abrams was involved in, being the producer and the one who made the film happen.

Found-Footage Movies are DEFINITELY more miss than hit. I think it became clear that the best ones had been made and what came out after just weren't going to match up.

I got you about "Pacific Rim"! Guillermo del Toro making it makes a big difference since his enthusiasm is certainly evident.