01.21Cloverfield
I’ll keep the spoiler-y stuff to the bottom and give you fair warning before I get into any specifics.
I saw Cloverfield opening night. Popped for the babysitter, the wife and I had dinner with some friends (Kathleen, Troy, it was the Mexican) and we settled in for a movie I had been waiting for for a couple months. Firstly the theater was packed, I’m glad we got there and were the head of the line that formed prior to seating. I’ll say it right now, going to a movie packed with giggling, chatty douchebag teens is like going down a fire pole covered with broken glass and lemon juice.
going to a movie packed with giggling, chatty douchebag teens is like going down a fire pole covered with broken glass and lemon juice.
We decided to see this in a ‘regular’ theater rather than the Movie Tavern that I’ve so fallen in love with. Well that will learn us. I’m never going to another ‘regular’ theater again. If it’s not Movie Tavern I’d rather stay home. We actually had a cop come in twice and pull some kids out. Back to the movie at hand.
I knew the whole thing was shot hand held, rough and tumble style like The Blair Witch. I loved Blair Witch, it’s in my top five scariest fucking movies of all time. Cloverfield however, is not. The hand-held POV camera work makes it feel like you’re watching a ninety minute YouTube video. I was ok with it because I was expecting it and I guess I can just get used to that type of camera work. As a word of warning, if the filming style of Blair Witch made you queasy Cloverfield will make you blow chunks.
The film does make you feel like you are with these people, running for your life while the unknown horror is knocking down buildings around you. It’s a good, exciting, thrill ride of a movie. I do recomend it but if you like clean and tidy Hollywood formula movies you may not like how the ride makes you feel when you get off.
All the rest of the stuff may be spoilerific so from here on you’ve been warned.
First off Odette Yustman who plays Beth, Ron’s ex-girlfriend-reason-for-living/dieing needs to fucking eat something. When she makes her appearance at the party wearing a gold sequined coffee bag of a dress she looks like a coat tree with a wig on. Her arms and legs have that twig thin, will shatter if her high heel breaks, look.
Now maybe I’m getting old but when I was a twenty-something I distinctly remember having a survival instinct. It would appear from this film that having a HD camera close by seems to remove that instinct completely. Actually that would go a long way to explain why so many YouTube videos involve voluntary stupidity and fire. I just didn’t buy the whole “We’re with you Rob.” thing. For a film that was all about trying to be “authentic” and “in the moment” I just don’t see that going down that way. There would be no way that a survival experience video wouldn’t be filled with “SHIT!” or “FUCKFUCKFUCK!” so the PG-13 rated dialog didn’t feel authentic at times.
Why is it that Beth was able to run and duck and even pull Ron out of a crashed helicopter all after being stapled by rebar but she couldn’t have pulled herself off of said rebar?
This whole thing happens in a matter of hours, how is it that the Army or National Guard is able to show up in the streets of Manhattan, with tanks and heavy artillery even, within an hour of the initial tremor?
The one really scary sequence in the film is the night vision subway tunnel attack. That will get your pulse going enough to make you forget that these little buggers are presumably deep sea dwellers and as such would likely not have the strength to walk on land let alone mount an ALIEN style leap and slash attack. But hey, it’s a monster movie.
I keep hearing about how this film is supposed to be for Americans and 9/11 what Gojira was to the Japanese for Hiroshima. I don’t see it. Other than playing on visuals burned into all our minds from that day, billowing dust chasing people down the street, New York skyline in flames, dust covered survivors wandering the streets, I don’t see the deeper cathartic connection. Gojira was a personification of the united states as a city destroying nuclear power and embodied the fears of many Japanese of another attack from the US. I just don’t see the monster of Cloverfield connect to extremist plots against the united states. To be honest Cloverfield offers more complete and direct answers about what causes it’s disaster than any of the official answers we’ve seen for what happened on 9/11. (Anyone else remember that building 7 WTC fell?)
I liked that the film didn’t tie itself up in a bow. I do think there could be more Cloverfield movies but I would see them as other’s accounts of the same event. It’s like Titanic, you know the boat is going to sink but you still went to see it sink. We knew that the monster was going to trash the city and another film from someone else’s perspective, perhaps someone who might know more about why and how it was happening could be something to see.