Cloverfield

Category: Sci-Fi - Fantasy  |  Tags: cloverfield monster new york sci-fi - fantasy

posted by: Danger2374 259 days ago          

In the age of the internet, YouTube, and viral videos, it’s possible to hype up a movie to insane proportions. Sometimes this works, as was the case with The Blair Witch Project. (At least it worked in terms of box office success. I personally thought the movie was [profanity removed] .) Sometimes it backfires, as evidenced most recently by the flop Snakes on a Plane. (It’s not that we expected SOAP to be good, but we at least expected it to be so bad that it was entertaining. It couldn’t even accomplish that.) Now 2008 brings us the internet-hyped, ultra-secret blockbuster hopeful, Cloverfield. I’ll admit it, they had me intrigued. All I knew was that it was about something (a giant monster? Who knows) destroying Manhattan and it was produced by J.J. Abrams. Well here’s my ten dollars, you have me sold!

The verdict? A solid hour and a half of entertainment. Here’s the story: Rob (Michael Stahl-David) had just gotten a big promotion at work and is moving to Japan. His friends and family throw him a big going-away party. One of those friends, nicknamed “Hud” (T.J. Miller), has unwillingly been given the job of filming the whole event for posterity. In the middle of the party the building is shaken by what feels like an earthquake, but who ever heard of an earthquake in Manhattan? The revelers file outside to see what’s going on, and suddenly the head of the Statue of Liberty is rolling past them down the street. You may have seen this in the trailer, and it is quite a spectacular sight.

The rest of the movie concerns their fight for survival and attempted escape from New York. Hud keeps the camera rolling the entire time and provides running commentary. The handheld camera gim [profanity removed] is not original (it was used most famously in the aforementioned Blair Witch), but here it is used to maximum effect. We only see what Hud sees, and by the end of the movie you actually wish you could have seen more of the monster. I remember when the modern remake of Godzilla came out in 1998, I literally said to a friend of mine, “If this isn’t the biggest movie of the summer, I’ll eat my hat.” I’m glad he didn’t call me on that claim, because boy was I wrong. That movie was not scary or much fun. Cloverfield gets it right.

I must say a word about the ending. Judging from the stunned silence that filled the theater when the movie was over, I don’t think the ending is going to be too popular with the general movie-going public. Comments I heard ranged from moderately baffled to outright angry. I’m concerned that the ending will cause bad word of mouth to spread and hurt this film’s box office, but it shouldn’t. The ending was simply appropriate, and I felt that it worked.

Cloverfield may be nothing more than a monster movie, but it is well made, thrilling, and at times even clever. It may be hard to believe that anyone would keep a camera rolling throughout the entire ordeal but hey, it’s a movie about a giant monster! I was willing to go along for the ride. It’s not bloated with an overlong running time, as many action movies are these days, and I was never bored. I consider that to be a success.