Cloverfield (2008)
For the first twenty minutes (more than a quarter of the film’s running time) you lean back, cross your legs, and smile in tedium inspired good humor. Does producer J.J. Abrams really have the cojones to do what it appears he’s done with his friend Matt Reeves’ film, Cloverfield? Did he really launch a massive, annoying internet campaign hyping a shallow little “will they or won’t they?” picture with shitty cinematography as the Godzilla of the Bratz generation?
The possibility irritates and amuses in equal measure, it would make for a VERY long movie, but you almost have to admire a man who’d so brazenly screw you over, Abrams’ ultimate reprisal against the people (myself included) who eventually saw Lost as the masturbation that it actually is. You want pointless? Abrams will give you pointless in spades, and this time you have to pay for it! Maybe the Statue of Liberty beheading was shown in the trailers out of context, it was the movie the characters in Reeves’ film were going to see, before catching a sushi special.
Eventually though, the monster does show up in largely fleeting glimpses and the advertising turns out to be fair; Cloverfield becomes a shockingly effective picture, exploiting its two primary influences (Godzilla, The Blair Witch Project) for all they are worth. I promised myself that I wouldn’t mention The Blair Witch Project in this post, no matter how pertinent, but all of the comparisons are unavoidably apt. Cloverfield is EXACTLY how you imagine that crossbreeding, and the film milks the dread that’s inherent in the limited vantage point of view that’s taken from Witch. Something can be, will, is, anywhere, chaos ready to spring at any moment. This gimmick revitalizes the cliches of the stomping giant monster movie; everything feels more immediate, disorienting, and jarring.
There’s actually a third influence, and it’s been just as roundly cited by the critics: the 9/11 attacks. Can I make a deal with all directors of giant critter movies in the next decade or so? If you want to make a just plain, balls out monster movie, great. If you want to make a richer film that deals in some sort of metaphorical way with the anxiety and ego deflation that the 9/11 attacks have brought on, then great, more than welcome to do so. I would, however, like to halt all future orders of the plain monster movie that makes just enough allusions to something deeper in the effort to get taken seriously when it really, truly has nothing else on its mind. Spielberg came close with his visceral, brilliant War of the Worlds, but mucked it up with an ending that’s anti-climactic and insulting even for him. The Mist’s pretensions get more and more absurd the farther you get from the theatre, etc, etc.
And I imagine that some will try to pin a tag of satire to Cloverfield. The characters are so intensely shallow and irritating that you can’t help but feel that somebody’s leg is being pulled somewhere. You keep waiting for the filmmakers to show some bit of awareness of the characters’ self-absorption, but they never do. Family is, with the exception of one brief, careless scene, never broached, all we’re supposed to care about is whether one tootsie can find another in a building that turns out, in a nifty development, to have partially toppled over.
The film, on its own terms, does work though, and the monster, when he properly appears, is a humdinger (all that “impossible to describe” hype is nonsense, I could sum him up in about five words) but the problem is that the film works just well enough for you to wish that the filmmakers had been a touch more ambitious and actually, for once, explored the society that’s getting eaten for a change, without the hypocrisy. Will someone ever do that? That’s a “will they or won’t they” for another day.
★★★
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:42 am
I’m still trying to decide where I stand on this one…hence no review yet.
The first 20 minute were brutal and the movie itself felt like it was 2 hours even though it was a spare 85 minutes.
Things got interesting once the monster showed up. I liked 2 of the 3 set pieces (bridge, subway…not so much leaning building).
In the end, I’m afraid this just wasn’t the monster movie I wanted. I could’ve lived without the hand held camera business for starters, even though I knew that was part of the deal going in and it’s what makes it special to everyone else.
I think I wanted more of an old school monster movie done right. Michael Giacchino’s Roar theme over the end credits made me want that even more.
But this was not that movie and it’s probably not fair to knock it down for being otherwise.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:02 am
Cloverfield has moments that are very scary and clever. But, like everything Abrams’ is associated with, it’s all gimmick, annoyingly flat and shallow even by the standards of the sandbox he’s playing in.
The bridge and the subway sequences were very effective though.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I’m with you on hating Lost, though I will say the 2-hour pilot was one of the better chunks of non-cable TV to roll down the pike in the last few years.
Based on that, I figured Abrams could be trusted for 85 minutes. Not so much.
I’m ok with it, but if anything it was just promising enough to make me wish it was better.