Cloverfield Review
This was definitely a mixed bag. It was good but didn’t quite live up to the hype. It answers few questions and seems to betray the viral marketing which implied that a Japanese mega-corporation was somehow involved. The performances were unremarkable but I suppose that could just be viewed as staying true to the format.
Ah, the format. There’s the rub. I’m all in favor of new and different storytelling methods but if the cost is making some people sick there may have been a better compromise between authenticity and polish. I mean it’s a monster movie for god’s sake, suspension of disbelief is a given. I say get the camera guy from 24 to shoot it and just add a quick line of dialogue about how the camera has some new kind of image stabilization. A behind the scenes picture seems to indicate the actors themselves held the camera for at least some of the movie.
The ending is somewhat dictated by the beginning which made me care a little less about the characters. The movie was either going to end with the majority of them dead or the camera falling out of a helicopter by virtue of it being found in Central Park. A nuclear strike was likewise ruled out as it would have wiped the SD card care of the resulting EMP.
The monster was almost a microcosym of the film itself with some good ideas, some stolen ideas, and some logic problems. The little monsters are Alien face-huggers, there’s just no denying it. The body of the main monster is very similar to the alien from Signs, only much larger and more annoyed.
The main monster has 2 logic problems not resolved in the movie. 1) If his lungs are outside his head like ears why is he so hard to kill? An interesting approach to alien design but it seems a glaring vulnerability to me. 2) Where do the fireballs come from? Is he a fire-breathing monster? Why don’t we see him do so if that’s the case? How can a fire-breathing lifeform exist and/or sustain itself?
A plot point that annoyed my partner was when they removed the spike from Beth but I may be able to clear this up. The spike was actually a part of the building’s broken support structure, attached to an enormous block of concrete. Yes what they did was medically unsound but the only alternative was to leave her there to die as medical services were not coming and they lacked the cutting tools to free the spike.
Of course a line or two of dialogue could have established this a bit better and save me from having to do so.
The name of the film is intriguing and a few theories have cropped up trying to explain it. The monster’s claw marks looking like clovers, the name of the street, the field Hud dies in. Personally I think it’s nothing more than a random word used to code classified DoD material like CIA Ops codenames and words.
One thing this movie does is cry out for a sequel. Personally I would abandon the format and do something more traditional or completely new. Like maybe show the whole film in the first-person as a character, like we see things from his eyes. But unfortunately it sounds like they might be married to the format saying there may have been other people with cameras that night. However they also said they want to explore the creature’s backstory which is something I’d be interested in seeing.
I would think a sequel likely, with a budget of $25 million it brought in $41 million the opening weekend ($35 from my group), a record for January beating out the Special Edition of Star Wars in 1997, which I also saw opening weekend. Judging from the crowds (it was so busy we had to switch theatres) and the margins the bean counters would probably go for it.
But I cannot stress enough that a sequel would probably do better with a more traditional format and ad campaign. Your gimmick got your fanbase, move on with some meat and potatoes now.
One thing that annoys me is how many reviewers seem to think this movie had something to do with 9/11. Something blows up in NYC and it would have been intellectually dishonest not to have at least one character pose the question of a possible attack. That line of thinking gets precisely 2 lines of dialogue and is dropped, acknowledging the white elephant but not making it about the elephant. Frankly I think they handled it well.
Some reviewers got really upset talking about the film allegedly evoking the imagery of 9/11 callously and without meaning. Frankly I think these people need therapy. I’m not joking. If this movie made you think of 9/11 for more than a few minutes to the point of making you upset I daresay you have unresolved issues about 9/11 and need to talk to someone about it. And given that so much time has passed I recommend whoever you talk to be a professional as whoever you’ve been chatting with thus far hasn’t helped you move on.
But rather than completely dismiss the notion out of hand let me ask this question: can no movie ever show anything bad happen in NYC ever again because of 9/11? If the answer is yes, tell me have the terrorists won by causing us to change how we live our lives as a direct result of their terror? If there’s one thing the current race for the presidency has shown is that we’ve evolved, simple fear-mongering answers aren’t good enough any more.
It annoys me that any idiot claiming everything is about 9/11 can hijack the debate so easily. But enough about Giuliani.
January 26th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I’m going to go ahead and pretty much agree with everything here. Shaky camera work as an effect just makes me nauseous. The creatures lungs being on the outside of it’s head does seem like a very visible vulnerability, but the creature did seem fairly tough and those “lungs” may have survived spaceflight. On another note, we are just assuming that they are lungs; they may be some other sort of regulatory or defensive organ. They appear to be pumps, but our skin has millions of pumps that produce sweat. Perhaps these 2 pumps hold 2 separate substances that when combine, ignite when contacting oxygen, ala Reign of Fire, giving plausibility to both the organs and the fire breathing.