It's a typical Friday evening in New York City, and a group of friends have gathered at a small apartment in Manhattan to celebrate a birthday. As they prepare to head out for a night on the town, they start to notice strange occurrences happening around the city.
The group soon discovers that the rival group is actually a team of scientists who have been studying the creature. They're trying to use the creature's destruction to their advantage, and they'll stop at nothing to achieve their goals.
As they try to make sense of what's happening, they stumble upon a bootleg DVD copy of a mysterious video labeled "Cloverfield" on a file-sharing site called MP4Moviez. The video appears to show footage of the creature, which they've only heard about through rumors.