Cloverfield Review
by Justin M (lifefeed AT gmail DOT com)January 30th, 2008
Cloverfield
review by Justin McGuire
rating: 4/5
"Cloverfield" opens with some text on the screen implying that the following footage was recovered from an SD camera in the area formerly known as Central Park. This gives us plenty of information to set the stage, that NY was at least partially destroyed, implying a terrific battle, that the cameraman does not hand the camera to the authorities on his own, implying death, and the military, after destroying NY, had enough time to later comb through the wreckage, implying an ultimate, if costly, victory.
All this is in the first minute, which sets the stage for a great story. I am thankful for this especially strong opening, because the next 15 minutes of this movie represents the most brutally boring time I have ever spent with a movie. I am including the long opening scene of "Solaris" in this comparison, since that at least made me curious and made me think. I am also including the "Sunrise Earth" show on the Discovery Channel, which is simply a sunrise recorded in real time.
Both of those are more exciting that these 15 minutes at the beginning of Cloverfield. The opening shots of are simply home movies. There do not exist interesting home movies. In this sense, I can give credit to director Matt Reeves for successfully imitating the most boring use of moving pictures ever created.
The movie is begins with LA-looking people partying in a NY loft that only exists in the wet bohemian dreams of set designers. Here we are introduced to our constant cameraman and narrator, Hud, played by T. J. Miller. The only appropriate one-word description for Hud is douchebag, the kind that would scream things like "don't tase me, bro!"
We also have our hero of the piece played by Michael Stahl-David, his largely unrequited love interest played by Odette Yustman, and the completely unrequited love interest of Hud played by Lizzy Caplan. None of the characters evoked any real interest or sympathy from me, since they exist only as one dimensional stand-ins to give the camera a reason to move forward.
Cloverfield betrays its form/content balance by matching realistic home movie camerawork with a very schmaltzy narrative. The hero in the piece decides to risk his life to adventure off and rescue a beloved girl; friends, military, and logic be damned. However melodramatic this is, I appreciate that it gives hope to a story that will inevitably end with a lot death.
Tim White, an artist who does phenomenal covers for H.P Lovecraft, wrote that a truly scary monster is designed to be scary in full- bright lights, and only after you've reached that point do you add shading and environmental effects. This rule of thumb is the great failing of most horror creatures in film, but a great success here. The slow reveal of the Cloverfield monster is done with the deft skill of a director who knows he has something truly scary to show.
The Cloverfield monster is sinewy, horrific, and alien, but still exhibits some startling human qualities. It gets angry, is fearful of pain, and judging by the way it roams nearly randomly around the city, appears to be as confused as our protagonists are. But then, it may just be hungry. By the end, we will see the creature in both an aerial shot and an extremely close-up shot.
Cloverfield is akin to The Blair Witch Project but with a traditional structure and higher production values. In this sense it loses its realism as a poorly edited home movie, but gains much in realm of entertainment that Blair Witch lacked. The creature is horrific, the chaos is delirious, the characters are dead men walking, and the result works enough to keep the movie tense. At least after the first 15 minutes.
4/5.
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