Seven Swords Seven Swords
Jan
18
2008

Cloverfield

Posted by Canfield at 3:33pm.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews .

Cloverfield opens on the heels of an ad campaign that has geeks all over the world hyped about its unique approach to the city stomping monster genre. For this film to fail to deliver on its promises is a scary prospect indeed- much scarier than any movie monster. After all any flick with the guts to dredge up the found footage device these days had better be good especially when the name of J.J. Abrams is attached.

Abrams has distinguished himself in a way that few do. Dare I invoke the name of Joss Whedon? Whedon has a better track record but has been given less support. I’m a huge Angel, Buffy, Serenity (show and movie) fan. But Abrams is pulling up the rear no matter what his detractors say about Lost and the ending of Alias. Mission Impossible III was a great action film. If Star Trek is anywhere near as good as it should be Abrams may leave former wunderkinds like Whedon in the dust on the simple basis of proving himself much more able to get projects approved and great product in front of fans.

In the meantime he’s thrown his weight behind Cloverfield as producer and by any estimation helped make an absolutely gripping, entertaining film with fellow Lost colleague Matt Reeves. Using a goodbye party as an excuse to get a video camera into the hands of a well meaning but doofy would be documentarian Cloverfield conveniently assumes his entire point of view for its relatively short runtime. Are we the better for it? I think yes as long as comparisons to better films like Godzilla aka Gojira are kept at a minimum. For a found footage film, a genre that provokes cynicism from even the most wide eyed movie goer these days, Cloverfield is surprisingly punchy. This is ghastly sometimes disturbing stuff and the monsters look great. You may just forget you’re watching a movie- for a moment or two.

But while I enjoyed this film a lot I think it’s pretty flawed as well. Cloverfield has been called a lot of things, ‘Godzilla from the POV of the people running down the street”, “Blair Witch with a budget”, and it’s even been heralded (perhaps a little presumptuously) as a true genre take on 9/11.And while I believe all these descriptions have some insight I can’t help but feel that Cloverfield is a 3 ½ not a four or five star film precisely because it taps into all those things. A final assessment of the satisfaction you’re liable to feel from Cloverfield is that it was slightly, only slightly, more entertaining than another apocalyptic thriller, I Am Legend. It preaches to a mainstream audience that at the end of the day is satisfied that it is a genre flick- a date movie offering some undeniable thrills and a morsel of food for thought. If it dealt in things a little less deep this might work. Even I Am Legend would spark a deeper series of discussions than anything our doofy cameraman Hud has to say.

Would I own this film, show it to others, does it resonate emotionally, tap into the current apocalyptic zeitgeist effectively? Yes to all of the above. But just as 9/11 arguably had a less devastating effect on the geography and psychology of Americans than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did on the Japanese so is Cloverfield a less powerful cinematic event than Godzilla. And Cloverfield isn’t just responding to something less global but something specific to the sort of paranoia we specialize in here in the west. We fear that something big is coming, something that will tear down our comfortable world and claim us all. But in the end our fear isn’t of whether we’ll survive but whether we’ll still have a Starbucks to go to when the last bomb (or white squiggly parasite looking thingie) has dropped. In this way Cloverfield, in so far as it invokes the stuff of ultimate dread, is ultimately a a pretty good genre film- a monster movie. But when it asks us to consider the fate of the characters the found footage device falters precisely because, unlike the characters in the Japanese film, those characters are offered up as sacrifices not to ideas but genre conventions. And Godzilla himself was a stand in for something that really could destroy all of us, Japanese and American. offering in its original Japanese version, deep insight into the way that war affects humanity. To call Godzilla a mere genre movie is to misunderstand history and not just the history of genre film. To call Cloverfield a good genre film is a well deserved compliment.

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Reader Comments

  1. crazybee 01/18/2008 @ 5:20pm

    I loved every second of this film, but my crowd was full of assholes who actually had the gall to boo it at the end.  That’s Northwest Indiana for you.

    Also overheard someone complaining about the fact that the Orphanage was in Spanish.  I weep for humanity and pray for a similar creature attack on my town.

  2. CynAnne 01/19/2008 @ 12:07am

    ... I hear ya, crazybee - I went to the 9:45 showing here (not nearly as many teeners), and being in the theater watching the end of NYC as we knew it was amazing. There were so many moments that literally made me gasp (J.J., you marvelous evil genius, you), and the end genuinely moved me (poor, sweet Hud..! *sniff*) - my hub didn’t enjoy it like I did, but then he generally does not enjoy a horror themed ‘moc-doc’ nearly as much as I do..! wink ...

  3. Mike 01/19/2008 @ 12:13am

    I’m with you on that crazybee. I’m not really old enough to get away with a full on old man rant, but holy shit do I hate the teenagers these days. They boo’d at the end of the movie, and half of them couldn’t shut up during the movie.

    It’s the sort of thing that could make you almost glad that the theaters will all be gone in like ten years.

  4. ChevalierAguila 01/19/2008 @ 3:41am

    This is the type of film that exists in big part thanks to the internet. Why bother writting a good plot? solid characters? Just make a bunch of buzz and hype in the net, keep it all “misterious” and what not and the audience will almost make the film for you.

    Anyway, i’m going back to watch my DVD of The Host.

  5. The Visitor 01/19/2008 @ 6:31am

    i’d say, those are pretty intelligent teenagers.

    why does booing at a movie make one an asshole? as long as people boo at the END of a film and not DURING the film, i say they are entitled to make their displeasure known. after all, they dished out hard-earned money for it. if critics who see a film for free may boo at it, then so may ticket-buyers.

  6. Canfield 01/19/2008 @ 8:05am

    NO CRITIC- NONE-NADA will EVER boo a film in progress. To do so may interrupt the experience of someone else and short circuit their own ability to think that experience through.

    Booing after? Nominally acceptable.

    Jeering at said film in the Men’s room on the way out to the parking lot- whatever.

    Writing a pithy engaging well thought through critique of said film on a blog where your comments can engage others and start dialogue- PRICELESS.

  7. Paradox Pod 01/20/2008 @ 1:18pm

    ChevalierAguila
    I didn’t get into all of the internet buzz.  I barely read any articles about the movie, because what could the tell me beyond what I needed to know: A Monster Movie, set in New York, told from an intimate ground-zero point of view.  Cool, I’m sold.  So I went to see it, knowing little more than that, and I loved it.

    Not because the marketing was “misterious” or because of buzz or hype.  I loved it because it was a movie with a decent budget that was more interested in a feeling of authenticity than what stars would be in it, or perfectly fitting into a 3-act format.

  8. oldnik 01/20/2008 @ 3:04pm

    Wow, a"Genre Movie” that seems to deliver! whatever next? a woman in the Whitehouse?!!!
    Like many, jaded movie goers, the sight of another over-hyped event movie usually leaves me cold, especially after the complete dross of I am Leg End… how do you create a decent 1st half of a movie then miss an open net chance to score? Anyway, my point is, that for ages we’ve waited for a decent big budget monster flick to come out of the US, often having to enjoy good offerings from over seas (The Host) while secretly waiting to see NY stomped good and proper. Now from the looks of it, and all the good/decent reviews we may have a chance for a group night out at the flicks that’ll please every1! after all, why waste good money on AVP-R (sounds like a new DVD format to me!)

  9. Mike 01/20/2008 @ 4:23pm

    @oldnik:

    More like a new straight-to-DVD format.

    Zing!

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