“Cloverfield” arrives in theaters more marketing phenomenon than movie, a “Blair Godzilla Project” built on an unknown cast, “found video,” a little-seen monster and a lot of hype.

Though this secretive, low-budget monster-munches-Manhattan thriller is entertaining enough to make Steven Spielberg smack his head and go, “That’s how I should’ve done 'War of the Worlds,’” all it amounts to is mostly smoke and mirrors.

It is a tribute to the cult of J.J. Abrams of TV’s “Lost,” the last “Mission: Impossible” movie and the upcoming “Star Trek: The J.J. Generation” (whose trailer is attached to “Cloverfield”) that this high-concept “Godzilla” riff has the buzz that it does. A street-level, panicked person’s point of view is a great way to tell this story, very post-9/11. But don’t feel alone if, after its 80 or so camera-shaking, monster movie mash-up minutes, you’re wondering, “Is that it?”

The found video here is a government tape for “Case Designate Cloverfield.” Something bad happened in Manhattan. This tape, from the Golden Age of the camcorder, is one of many that documented that event. We see it, unedited, a home movie of a failed love affair, a “sayonara” party to 30ish Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and the Thing that Interrupted Rob’s Party.

Twenty minutes of cutesy, awkward and effective “back story” consists of Rob’s earlier, mostly recorded-over “best day ever” with his best girl. Then, BOOM! The lights flicker. They dash to the roof of the Central Park apartment to see an explosion in New York harbor. They run downstairs in time to see the flaming head of the Statue of Liberty crash in the street in front of the building.

One of the sly, perhaps unintended subtexts of “Blair Witch” was its commentary on a naive, media-saturated generation more at home looking at a screen than experiencing the real world. In “Cloverfield,” they’ve grown older, but not up. They stop in the midst of this horrific moment to take cell-phone snaps of Liberty’s skull. They dash for safety, until their cell rings. Ohmygod, if you don’t stop, you might lose the signal!

And through it all, Hud, the goofy cameraman, keeps that camera rolling, capturing the panic, the confusion, the end of the Empire State building, New York looters, the Army’s arrival, the mass evacuation of Manhattan, and glimpses of “this terrible thing” that is doing this, and its tiny accomplices, which are, “I don’t know. Something else. Also terrible.”

Buildings fall, bombers bomb, the deafening chaos of battle surrounds them — and Hud keeps taping.

“People are gonna want to know how it all went down,” he says. Yes, it does remind you of raw 9/11 footage.

But it’s still a jolt to the genre. The camera tumbles, the smoke billows, gigantic footsteps thunk, women shriek and the car alarms blare. And we are there. Even if we don’t care as much for these strangers as we should, we know Hud was right. We do want to know “how it all went down.”