Cloverfield (2008)

Written by Drew Goddard
Directed by Matt Reeves

What do you get when you take the creator of Lost and Alias, a writer from Lost, Alias, Buffy, and Angel, and a guy who wrote the bulk of Felicity? The most over-dramatic first person point of view monster movie ever, of course! I actually ended up liking Cloverfield a hell of a lot more than I thought I would, although, being me, I have my fair share of gripes.

If you don't know the story, you're bound to hear it 9 million more times, so here you go: Rob (I'm not going to dignify these Laguna Beach-level actors by telling you their real names, which you wouldn't know anyway) is going to Japan, where he has been promoted to VP of whatever company it is he works for. It doesn't matter, as you know, he will never get there, at least not in the course of the film. However, his friends care, and they throw him a going away party in his lush Central Park-facing apartment so all his friends can say goodbye one last time. A camera is brought out by his brother Jason to document the occasion, who decides he doesn't want to play cameraman, so he tosses the responsibility off to Rob's best friend, the dim-witted Hud. You have to understand, Hud is the type of moron that would show his dick to a cop if you told him the cop would give him a cookie for doing so. He's that stupid. The party is being planned by Lily, Jason's girlfriend, who cares far too much for Rob, which I believe is a clever ruse by the writer to try to make you care for these characters. Make no mistakes about it though, these are the types of yuppies anyone who has a real life despises, for their limited worldviews, their selfish personalities, and their paper-thin motivations.

Through the course of the party it is made painfully obvious that Rob is in love with Beth, his friend since college, but Rob has never revealed his true love, and therefore he is leaving town without admitting this, thus breaking my widdwe hawt. It's ok though, none of this ends up mattering as much as the writer insists it should. This movie is unique because of its point of view, the fact that it is a disaster/monster movie told from the point of view of the people it is happening to.

With that said, let me examine that fact for a moment, because the truly disappointing thing about this whole film is it tries to tackle issues and establish metaphors far beyond its limited scope. You are supposed to love and care for these characters, when in reality the only people that would care for them are the same vapid 20-somethings that see themselves as the disavowed heroes involved. This may all sound overly negative, but the fact of the matter is, this film is only 75 minutes long, and only the first 15 minutes are spent trying to convince the audience that they need to care about these people. The rest of the plot basically ditches this theory, and in another film, this would've upset me. In this one, it relieved me.

Putting aside my non-existent knowledge of the geography of Manhattan and its streets, the rest of the movie is realistic enough to my liking. Once the monster hits and interrupts Rob's party, panic hits the streets and people are thrown into a fluster, trying to escape the rampaging monster. Of course the forlorn Rob is upset at how he spurned Beth, and once the damage looms across the city, he is on a mission to go find her and save her.

The attacks themselves are indeed a thinly veiled attempt to metaphorically reconstruct the atmosphere and mania that surrounded the 9/11 attacks, and I have to admit it is indeed exploitative of the attacks themselves, and the way people involved probably felt. Me, I have no connection or heartache to the 9/11 attacks, so it doesn't bother me in that sense, but at the same time, the metaphor is supposed to only be lurking in the back of everyone's mind, but it is a painfully obvious sense of lurking. The dust-covered people, the loss, the deconstruction of families, it is all a not-so-clever attempt at metaphor. I can see how it would make people mad, because it's so coy in its nature, but it misses the mark so boldly.

The camerawork got to me after a while, although I understood its nature and association to this project. To do it any better would be to lie plainly to the audience, to do it any less would make the images mostly undecipherable. For a while, the lack of showing the monster, or the clever hiding of it behind buildings got annoying. I've read from an NYC resident that the path the monster takes through Manhattan would have only been achieved if the monster was purposely chasing the protagonists of the film. It bothered him, but as I said, my inexperience with the streets of Manhattan leaves me not caring about this aspect. It is apparent in the film that it is rather convenient the monster keeps showing up right behind them, but not in a way that bothered me, like it did in War of the Worlds.

To me, the motivations and the characters become throwaway after a certain point, the redeeming quality of this film is its originality in the point of view aspect, and the fantastic monster itself, and the unmitigated havoc it wreaks upon the city. This is the American Godzilla in more ways than one, not only because it's a monster disaster movie, but because it has all the qualities that Godzilla possessed. Even though the monster's origin or reasoning is never revealed, it is apparent that the viewer is to be drawn to the conclusion that it came from the ocean, and that metaphorically, it is some manifestation of the bad things that men have done to the planet in general. Still, like the novella The Mist, I liked the fact that there was a lack of explanation, because that's not what this movie should or would actually be about.

It is about these characters, and vapid and selfish as they might be, you are stuck with them, so you are supposed to focus on their individual plights. As much as I didn't personally care for these people, their attitude, their lifestyles, or their choices, I still easily believed that they were worth following. Even if that was only because of their predicament, or the fact that they were being followed by this monster.

Now, let's take a moment to talk about this monster. I'll only reveal what it looks like below, for those that are dying to know, but in the meantime, I think it's a fantastic achievement. Even if the CGI itself is weak at best, I can accept that, because of the way it is shot, and the mostly fleeting shots of it. However, be not afraid, there is a time where you get to see the monster in its fully glory, and the havoc it can dish out. Sure, it's not The Host, nor is it portrayed as The Host was, but at the same time, it gives you enough to the point where you are satisfied. Much of the movie I was disappointed, until this point came about in the film, and you get to spend some time just marveling at the monster and its design. Now, an explanation for those that are looking for it, in between the spoiler bars.

*****SPOILER*****





The monster is a giant pink creature, with a sea-creature like head, that is shaped like a walnut, and opens in two halves. It is easily 55 stories tall, has a huge tail not unlike the monster in The Host, two amphibious hind legs kind of like a giant frog's, two inverted elbow style front arms, like the the back legs of the monster in X-tro (as seen here http://chud.com/nextraimages/famous44.jpg) and small eyes, with bullfrog like pads behind it's head that serve as ears but blow up when the monster zones in on something[/color]






*****END SPOILER*****

It really is something to behold, and I believe it is the one reason I see this film as a triumph. It had exactly what I wanted, big monster action, a new monster, and not a cheap cop-out like I expected it to be. To add to the glee, there are little parasites that drop off of the monster, to keep everyone occupied while the monster is not on the screen, and they add some extra tension and some nice little moments themselves. I will also use this section to add that this is a pretty violent film for only being PG-13, there is some substantial gore for what it is (the soldier, Marlena, the parasite attacks) and while it's nothing you'd see in an R film, it does manage to push the envelope. I give Abrams and crew credit for this, but at the same time, they know they would've had a bomb on their hands if they would've tried to string the audience along to see the monster in a second movie or something.

As for the filmmaking, well, it's what you expect it to be, a guy running around with a camera. It captures what you want it to, and it was worth my $6.25 (man, theater prices rule here) alone. The CGI may look cheap, but that's because it is, the film only had a budget of $25 million, and I believe they made that work very, very well, enough to be admired by other filmmakers as a lowering of the bar, as if to say "Hey, we did it, why can't you?" It's also a shot at the American remake of Godzilla, which was a huge flop and cost millions upon millions of dollars. Here, they've done the same thing, just with better marketing (the methods which I became annoyed with, but hey, you can't hold it against them, it worked. I think the people that were upset with it just can't admit it actually worked on even the most hardened of movie fans.

The message this film sent out took precedence above everything else it was about, strictly in a production sense of course. They managed to reinvent the giant monster attack film, update it with modern technology, and market it into a hit. One thing I've been reading about that people thought negatively was the promise for the metaphor of the role of technology and the voyeurism it brings. However, I think to explore it any further or more overtly than done in the movie would've been a moot point. Everyone knows how voyeuristic cell phone cameras have made the world, there is no reason to hammer it home in a monster movie, it would've distracted from the plot at hand. Another problem I've seen people complaining about is the fact that for all the technology savvy bits, the camera operator never talks about the battery or changing it. I personally don't see a problem with this, because even though the events take place over a 7 hour period, the footage that is the movie is supposed to be what was retrieved from the Cloverfield site. So, all in all, there was only 75 minutes of footage. As far as I've experienced, you can shoot 75 minutes on a single camera battery, and the people that are complaining about this don't allow themselves to consider the fact that maybe every time the recording stopped, the camera was turned off. Well, I allow that thought, and it makes perfect logical sense to me. To me, this is just nitpicking, unnecessarily trying to find extra things wrong with the film.

This is a one of a kind monster film, and the only other note I want to pass on is I really hope there is no sequel, that JJ Abrams and crew can leave it at this, and not attempt to milk it for more money. It shall stand alone and do well as such. However, I don't think it will do as well upon repeat viewings, except for on DVD, where it will be fun monster-spotting and skipping all the boring character bits. Bravo guys, you managed to make a movie that supersedes all the Dawson's Creek bits and show off some bad ass monster action.

7.6/10