[Movie Review] CLOVERFIELD
I went in to Cloverfield feeling a little confused and burnt out with the film before a single second had been played. So much so that one month ago I was really excited about seeing this film. How things changed? The film got released on Friday here in the UK and normally I’d be racing to see the flick at its first showing or to catch it opening night or something. Instead, thanks to incessant TV spots/trailers/posters and the like along with the whole thing of not being able to click on a website without either seeing marketing for it or coming across another review, I just got strangely bored by the whole notion of Cloverfield’s existence and, whilst waiting for the preview screening of Juno to start, I gave in and caught up with Clover-Hype at a Sunday afternoon screening! And you know what?
I dug Cloverfield. A lot. I really enjoyed the hell out of it. I’m not going to convince you that it is a five-star work of art (like Empire Magazine) nor am I going to put a case forward for it being one of the greatest blockbusters of all time. It’s “Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project” for God’s sake and you shouldn’t lose perspective of that because that’s all it is. However, as “Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project” attempts go this is a very, very good piece of cinema. You want to be thrilled, scared, made to laugh and put on the edge of your seat? Then Cloverfield is a film that lives up to expectations in that regard. It does exactly what is required of itself and puts up a good fight against the “hype machine” that, lets be honest, is very nearly killing the movie.
We really don’t need to spend too much time on plot do we? However the general story is that a group of young professionals are gathered in a down-town New York apartment to say goodbye to their friend Rob who is leaving for Japan the next day. Rob’s best friend Hudd is recording the party when a giant creature attacks the city and starts laying waste to it. Keeping the camera rolling throughout, Hudd captures the events from an exclusive insiders perspective as Rob and a small band of his friends try to, first, escape the city and then go rescue the love of Rob’s life from a trapped skyscraper!
The film just ingratiates itself on you so much that it just flat out won’t let you hate it. I found myself coming across flaws only to have the film switch in to overdrive to impress me and take my mind away from them or at the very least turn its flaws on its head and in to something I started to like. In that regard I couldn’t help but be completely seduced by the Cloverfield charm. The whole “taped over” elements of Rob and Beth’s trip to Coney Island jarred with me and felt a little tacky, but then I started to really come to like them and what they were subliminally trying to teach us about the characters of Rob and Beth. The bum-achingly “super-convenient” aspect of Hudd shooting all of this footage with 1) a never-ending battery and 2) a style of framing and shot-selection that would make Steven Spielberg not want to get up in the morning, irritated me at first because the shots seemed to go from being realistically gritty, grimy and caught on the hoof to being accidentally well-lit, well-framed and professionally done. Then I came to really get involved with the film and that sort of thing just completely passed over me which is always a good sign of a films quality.
What really deserves a mention though is the acting and the script. The acting isn’t particularly fantastic in terms of causing other professionals to worry come Awards Season or anything like that. But, for what Matt Reeves (director) and JJ Abrams (producer) are trying to achieve, they need the roles to be underplayed and to feel as real as possible. All involved do a commendable job of achieving this aspect. There’s a few wooden planks here and there (Hello Mike Vogel, how you doing?) but for the most part the core cast act like people I know and like people I know would in the same situation. There were a couple of moments of clunky dialogue here and there but they’re forgivable because most of the dialogue is things that we’d say or want to say in a similar situation and the inappropriately timed comedic one-liners don’t feel out of place just to acquire a laugh but actually things that a panicked and nervous type would say under the circumstances. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Cloverfield impressed me most because all involved tried to inject a degree of realism into a completely unrealistic notion and that really worked for me. It doesn’t often. For example (not that the two are at all comparable) I cannot get any enjoyment from the movie Deep Impact for exactly the same reason – Mimi Leder places a degree of realism into a completely unrealistic notion and the fun (a la Armageddon) is removed as a result.
The use of the “monster” works well and you should ignore reports that this thing is barely in it and barely seen. It’s used in the same way Spielberg used the shark in Jaws (although this isn’t for technical reasons here!) whereby we get the “feeling” of it’s presence with fleeting glances, sound effects and the like until there’s a period where it just cannot be hidden or disguised anymore and it’s brought out to a fully-realised and well-executed effect.
The much-touted tunnel sequence is an absolute butt-clencher that comes across as so brilliantly played; it mimes scares out of the ‘documentary-on-the-lam’ mentality fantastically well.
There are a few missteps within the film. Ones that, for me, no amount of glossy no-holds-barred entertainment can wash over. This is a film that you can nitpick to death if you want to. I don’t. I paid my £6.65 and got entertained to high heaven by the film so there’s a lot I will forgive. One of the sore points for me was that the film sold me on the ‘discovered’ footage/fake-documentary element quite well and for the most part I never questioned it once I got involved, but then in the final moments it ruined itself. You know the final act when we reach Central Park and ‘something happens’ and then we fade to black and then come up on the ‘Bridge Sequence’? That clunked for me! That was the film’s betrayal. I thought that was the moment when the film stopped playing like a documentary and started serving the “story” of Rob and Beth and as a result it broke its own concept.
*Spoilers Alert* [Wyv note: Highlight the text between the two "Spoiler" warnings if you want to know]
Hud has been our eyes for Cloverfield. Rob and Beth’s story has played out through what he has and has not filmed. When he looks up and sees the monster above him and is killed, whereby the camera falls conveniently alongside his dead body, that is the end of the film right there. That is the legitimate end. What follows with Rob and Beth under the bridge etc. takes us away from the degree of legitimacy the film has fought for and into the realms of a cloying love story that needs an “end” because we’re expected to buy the notion that, under the circumstances, having risked everything to rescue the love of his life Rob would drag her back under the feet of this murderous creature just so he can grab the camera from the hands of his dead best friend. Sorry but no, not for me! I’m not buying that!
*Spoilers Over*
The film lends itself to numerous potential sequels, should they decide to look at the format through the eyes of the military, a news crew, another group of people or the monster itself (who has brought a camcorder along for his weekend in New York and cannot believe the hostility towards him. “Wow! It’s true what they say” he says to himself “They really don’t like foreigners in America after 9/11!” Now THAT is a sequel I’d pay to see!) but whether a Cloverfield 2 can have the unique, bullish thirst to entertain in quite the same way as this movie, I’m not entirely convinced.
All in all, I had a great time with the film though. I thought it was a solid, entertaining piece of blockbuster fare. The film’s semi-annoying but eventually winsome quality (the fake documentary format) proves to be its saving grace because without it, this monster movie would have fell flat on its face it appears. The marketing campaign may well have burnt me out when it went in to overdrive but, for once, this was a film where the quality of the film actually lived up to the hype. It’s not going to change the world, it’s not going to even change the face of blockbuster filmmaking. But, as a night out at the cinema goes, this is well worth your time and a thoroughly fun and endearingly entertaining film to boot.
7 Responses to “[Movie Review] CLOVERFIELD”
I did not enjoy this film for a number of reasons, some of which I laid out in my review. I found the characters to be annoying, so I didn’t care about who survived or not. The acting was garbage. Teh shaky cam made me legitimately sick to my stomach, and the monster looked like Princess Leia. The movie is basically The OC meets Godzilla In Name Only meets The Blair Witch Project.
The shaky cam complaints are a bit hyperbolic, it wasn’t that bad.
“The monster looks like Princess Leia,” what the **** are you smoking?
Those two red things on the side of its head looks like Leia’s buns! It’s the first thing I thought when I saw the thing, and I busted out laughing
No, not really.
Yes, yes really
Personaly I didn’t like the movie or the camera works. But in general it wasn’t a bad movie.
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