...an A for effort, a B for visuals, a C for content, and a C for photography, the latter, of course, being intentionally herky-jerky.
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Paramount's 2008 monster movie "Cloverfield" is the kind of film 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, and now that Paramount's engineers have transferred it to Blu-ray disc, I suppose the controversy will just intensify as fans and foes argue about whether the high-definition picture and sound enhances the experience or makes a contradiction of it. I just tried to suspend my disbelief and go with the story. The improved sound alone was enough to make that easier than I thought it would be, and I enjoyed the movie the second time around far more than I did the first time.
Anyway, "Cloverfield" is a good example of style over substance. Indeed, the movie is all style and very little substance. Oh, there is a plot, but it's an intentionally familiar and simplistic one about a monster that attacks New York; and there are characters, but they are also familiar and almost the same as one another. So, mainly what we get 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 after the events of the story. How the footage got into the hands of Paramount Pictures for worldwide distribution is apparently irrelevant.
First, the plot: As I said, a monster attacks New York. That's the plot. Since on the commentary track the director suggests that he made the film as a homage to old monster movies of the fifties, he expects us to have seen practically everything in it, from "Godzilla" to "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" and from "It Came from Beneath the Sea" to dozens of others, including the more-recent Korean monster movie "The Host." So, how is this one different? Well, beyond the "documentary" gimmick, the filmmakers make little attempt to explain what the creature is, where it came from, what it wants, why we can't stop it, why it's impervious to all modern weaponry, and if it's intelligent, why it rampages around town so randomly. As a reader comment pointed out in my review of the standard-definition edition, there is a shot at the end of the movie that purports to explain how the creature got to Earth. But the shot is so fleeting and vague (you'll have to study it closely even to find it), it doesn't so much explain things as it does confuse them further and pose more questions; it seems like another contrivance the filmmakers threw in at the last minute to further stir the pot.
The characters are Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David), a New Yorker who is about to go off to Japan (how cleverly 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 not much story.
Now, about the main 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 your head spin. If you recall the handheld camera movements in "The Blair Witch Project," which this film hopes to emulate, they are nothing compared to the agitation 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. 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 around him, 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 once in a while?
Yes, "Cloverfield" purposely 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 given time. While this is good for creating tension (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 stars.
On the negative side, it's hard to root for any of the characters because, as I mentioned, they all seem interchangeable. Their introduction is much too long, they're all young and beautiful, and you can't tell them apart. Moreover, 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; and many sequences include dark, murky, shadowy places that often squander their spooky potential. If this were a parody, the clichés might have worked, but it's not a parody. Then there's that goofy handheld camera work I've pointed out.
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