...once past the monster's initial attack on the city, Cloverfield isn't very scary or very suspenseful or even very interesting.
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Note: In the following joint review, both John and Jason provide their comments on the film, with John also writing up the Video, Audio, Extras, and Parting Shots.
The Movie According to John:
Paramount's 2008 release "Cloverfield" is the kind of movie whose reputation preceded it. First, there was an ad campaign that generated plenty of buzz in newspapers and on the Internet before the show ever opened. Second, there were the reviews, which ranged all over the place in terms of their positive and negative criticism. And, third, there was word of mouth. For instance, two friends who had seen the film before I did provided me with totally contradictory opinions, one person loving it and the other person positively hating it. Do we hear echoes of "The Blair Witch Project" here? I think we can all agree, however, that it's an unusual movie. Whether you'll like it or not is another story.
"Cloverfield" is a good example of style over substance. Indeed, the movie is all style and almost no substance. Oh, there is a story line, but it's a familiar and simplistic one, and there are characters, but they are also familiar and almost the same as one another. So, mainly what we've got is a gimmick, in this case that the characters in the film supposedly shot everything themselves with a handheld digital camera, which the Department of Defense found afterwards. How the footage got into the hands of Paramount Pictures for worldwide distribution is apparently irrelevant.
First, the story: A monster attacks New York. That's the story. We saw practically the same thing in "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms," "Godzilla," "It Came from Beneath the Sea," and dozens of others, including the more-recent Korean monster movie "The Host." How is this one different? Well, for one thing, the filmmakers make no attempt to explain what the creature is, where it came from, or what it wants. Apparently, more irrelevancy.
The characters are Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David), a New Yorker who is about to go off to Japan (how appropriate) to live, his brother Jason (Mike Vogel), his girlfriend Beth (Odette Yustman), his buddy Hud (T.J. Miller), and friends Lily (Jessica Lucas) and Marlena (Lizzy Caplan). All of them except Beth are at a going-away party in the city when the monster attacks, and Rob's only concern when the horror happens is to get across town to Beth and make sure she's OK, with the other friends in tow. Beyond that, there is no plot, and the characters are so much alike--twenty-something and attractive--it's hard to tell them apart.
Now, about the gimmick. The friend who told me he hated the film said he saw it with a fellow who got positively nauseous watching it. Why? Because in the movie the character Jason asks Hud to film Rob's party and document everything that happens. Hud takes this responsibility quite earnestly, and when the creature attacks, Hud follows every move he and his friends make. Well, if he didn't, we wouldn't have a movie. The problem is that he isn't a very good photographer; consequently, most of the film's footage jumps up and down, round and about, in and out, dipping and shaking constantly to the point of making the head spin. If you recall the handheld camera movements in "The Blair Witch Project," which this film desperately hopes to duplicate, they are nothing compared to the disturbing, agitating commotion this camera creates. A little of this kind of thing goes a long way, and after about ten or fifteen minutes of it, I was weary of the ploy, too. I also had to wonder why the character, Hud, couldn't ever seem to hold the camera steady. I know we're supposed to believe he was in a state of terror and panic, but if he had the presence of mind to continue filming everything, despite the illogic of his doing so, why didn't he also have the presence of mind to balance and stabilize his camera at least on a few occasions?
"Cloverfield" borrows its ideas from other monster movies, and it uses a relatively small budget for such a big extravaganza, so it cuts corners wherever it can. For instance, we don't see the creature itself until well into the movie, and even then we see it only in brief glimpses. You'll remember that we didn't see the original King Kong until well into the picture, either, nor the shark in "Jaws" until the second half. However, once we did see Kong and the shark, we got pretty good views of them, yet in "Cloverfield" we never actually see very much of the monster at any time. While this is good for creating a little tension and suspense (because what we don't see is usually more frightening than what we do see), it might be disappointing to some viewers who expect a bigger payoff.
Another cost-cutting measure is for the film not to star any really big names. This is a plus in that the film saves major money in salaries (without a Tom Cruise saving the world, the filmmakers save $100,000,000 right there), and it seems more authentic in dealing with real people rather than big-name movie stars.
On the negative side, it's hard to root for any of the characters because, as I say, they all seem interchangeable. And it's hard to take the movie seriously because it plays on so many established monster-movie clichés: a cell phone goes dead at the exact moment a character needs it; the monster shows up wherever the characters go, as though it were omnipresent; many sequences include dark, murky, shadowy places that fail to live up to their spooky potential. And there's that goofy handheld camera work I've mentioned.
Yet despite my reservations about the movie's use of the handicam, I liked the film's CGI graphics. After 9/11, films showing attacks on New York City are probably not in the best of taste, yet if it has to be, doing it as science fiction is probably the best route. The scenes of panic and destruction look impressively authentic. The monster, what little we see of it, looks impressive. The smaller crab-like critters that drop off the monster look impressive. The shots in the subway system look impressive. And the shots on the rooftop look impressive.
The movie's downfall is in not making us care enough about what is happening. Even though there is much one can praise about cinema-vérité style, using it to tell an eighty-four-minute horror story with little meaningful story, dialogue, or character interaction probably isn't the best use of the technique. The fact is, once past the monster's initial attack on the city, "Cloverfield" isn't very scary or very suspenseful or even very interesting. The movie picks up a fraction of excitement at the very end, but it's a long stretch of tedium getting there.
John's Film Rating: 5/10
The Movie According to Jason:
With a viral marketing campaign hot on the heels of "Snakes on a Plane," the movie formerly known only as "1-18-08" sent Internet fan boys into a tizzy. Web sites, clues, checking background details in the promotional footage…an independent observer would have thought these people were nuts. But it is easy to understand the obsession: Produced by "LOST" guru J.J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard of the same program, there was a possibility the amateur-looking trailers were merely a tantalizing glimpse at something more than an American "Godzilla." Sadly, it doesn't even live up to that low bar.
As Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) is about to relocate to Japan, his friends throw him a going-away party. During the get-together, the apartment building shakes and the news claims a tanker has tolled over near the Statue of Liberty. But outside, with the head of Lady Liberty rolling down the street, it becomes abundantly clear a tanker is not responsible. Which then raises the question: What is?
Clocking in at a very lean ninety minutes, this is perhaps the most substance-free film released to mainstream media in the last decade. Quite literally, nothing of any consequence happens in "Cloverfield." People run, they scream, they die, a giant monster smashes some buildings, there's some more jumping and yelling…a bit of blood, some missiles, and that's about it. This is a movie built on the flimsiest of premises and supported with only scant creature effects--far less than a production of this kind usually entails.
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[release]23337[/release]