“What was frightening to me was the idea of a large creature who was spooked,” Cloverfield director Matt Reeves says in one of the DVD’s special features, adding later, “To me, there’s nothing more frightening than a wild animal—and if the wild animal is 300 feet tall, then you’re in trouble.”

Cloverfield has been one of the more interesting mainstream films so far this year—from the cryptic hype preceding its release to the people getting motion sickness while watching it to criticism involving the film’s 9/11 angle—and the fact it’s done all this while basically being an unapologetic ripoff of Godzilla makes it all the more fascinating. For me, the thing that really nails Cloverfield isn’t all of that, but the actual technique of the thing—it basically takes the Blair Witch idea and pretty brilliantly and skillfully amps it up to 11, and also institutes a cool flashback structure and sneaks in enough hidden Easter eggs to keep the obsessive fans of the film busy for months. There’s also just the fact that it’s this huge blockbuster-y type adventure flick that also happens to be kind of small and unsettling and creepy, which is cool. More on all that, and the lowdown on the DVD’s special features, after the jump. There’ll be spoilers.

“One of the things I thought would be very interesting is if it’s not a monster that’s come out of the water to just wreak havoc randomly and kill people,” says lead creature designer Neville Page, the guy responsible for designing Cloverfield’s ungainly and awkward monster. “It is an infant. It’s newly-hatched, newly born. And all the pain that goes with something being exposed to a foreign environment, and [being exposed to] temperatures and things and sounds and little pestilent, almost like ants, people…. Having the knowledge it was a baby really helped me understand a little bit more about what the creature would do.” For me, that kind of sums up what’s so creepy and clever about Cloverfield’s well-worn conceit: While Godzilla is either a furious behemoth or a good-hearted protector (depending on what film you’re watching him in), the one thing he never is is scared, and that goes for any number of city-destroying monsters: The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, the aliens in Independence Day, etc. But Cloverfield’s monster is weird-looking and in pain and confused and out of whatever its element might possibly be, and is all the more destructive and terrifying for it; when the thing crushes buildings and bridges, it’s usually because it’s flailing, and when the Statue of Liberty’s head bounces its way through a Manhattan canyon, it’s not an ideological symbol (though you could read it that way, if you tried hard enough) so much as it’s collateral damage from something huge and frightened that’s just tearing shit up.

None of this would be as effective if Cloverfield wasn’t conceived and shot as well as it is, with the handheld camera effect enabling the filmmakers “to play peekaboo with the monster,” as editor Kevin Stitt puts it. That style, combined with a pretty epic scope, also enables the film to feel like nothing else out there, and one of the most interesting parts of the DVD is seeing how the filmmakers pulled off the first-person technique so well. They readily admit that they used amateur footage of 9/11 on YouTube for inspiration, which is one of the more discomfiting and strange elements of the film. Exec producer J.J. Abrams tries to justify it at one point (“There’s this underlying fear that we all have everyday that something else might happen at every moment. The idea of a monster movie, it allows people to experience that kind of fear very safely”), but that doesn’t quite wash, and watching at least two or three shots that’re highly reminiscent of 9/11 in what basically amounts to a summer popcorn action movie is still fucking weird.

Other things that're interesting: Realizing how much blue- and greenscreen was used (like the smartest special effects films, Cloverfield hides its best effects in the background, and you never realize you’re watching them), realizing how little of the film was shot in the Paramount Backlot instead of New York (which is weird, ’cause the look of the film absolutely nails the feel of parts of that city), and discovering that the guy who plays Cloverfield’s cameraman, Hud (comedian T.J. Miller) is profoundly unfunny and irritating when he’s not in the film. “Document 01.18.08: The Making of Cloverfield” is well worth a look, as are the featurettes “Cloverfield Visual Effects” (about how the filmmakers pulled off the film’s incredible set pieces) and “I Saw It! It’s Alive! It’s Huge!” (about the creation of the monster).

There’s also some lame stuff: A couple of DVD Easter eggs lead to bloopers and the like (BLOOPERS MAKE ME WANT TO CRAM A LETTER-OPENER INTO MY THROAT), while the alternate endings and deleted scenes are, at best, underwhelming. I haven’t checked out Reeves’ commentary track yet, in part because I’m kind of angry it doesn’t also include the film’s writer, Buffy alumnus Drew Goddard (who also hinted a while back that there was at least some footage shot that would’ve pushed Cloverfield out of PG-13 territory--but this DVD, at least, is the straight-up theatrical cut). But those quibbles aside, the Cloverfield DVD’s worth checking out if you missed the film in theaters, or even if you saw it then: Technically, the film's impressive as hell, but it's also just fun, provided you're into the sort of movies where giant creatures smash things.