Cloverfield (2008)
2008-01-23
The visual style and integration of CG effects was generally very good. The feigning amateur cinematography was also well done. The camera style was successful in providing me with what I would consider as immersive an experience as you can get with film.
The problem for me comes with the fact that this is supposed to be a random video document of events... not a narrative being spun for us. It's supposed to be found footage, not fiction. So, as immersive as the visual experience was, the movie suffered greatly from trying to tell a story, a story which I call, 'lovers in a dangerous time'.
The set up for the love story was entirely too long and attempted to script together characters out of the people who were on screen. Now were this a standard limited omniscient narrative movie, there would be absolutely nothing wrong with that, it is in fact to be expected. It is of course how most movies accomplish the telling of a story. However, Cloverfield’s duality with respect to it's realistic presentation and it's desire to tell a love story ends up detracting from both of those goals. The character of Hud, while frequently funny, at times took away from the feeling of “What I’m watching is real”. But, the prime example of what I'm talking about is the conveniently expository cuts to what was previously on the tape... sure that helped tell the story, but it took me out of the realism every single time.
The movie would have pleased me more if it had stuck with it's concept of being presented as found footage, and lessened its attempts at forcing its love story narrative on us. I'm not saying do away with the love story altogether... I mean you need something to justify the protagonist's repeated ridiculous decisions to not just run for their lives. I'm just saying that it should have trusted us to let our imaginations fill in the blanks, like it did with the other parts of the movie. When it came to the beasts, the movie trusted us to use our imagination quite a bit. On the car ride home, my date and I exchanged various theories: Was it alien or terrestrial in origin? Is there more than one? What was the monster's goal in the city? Does it breathe oxygen or nitrogen? Is it intelligent? Is it a toxin, bacteria, or a virus that causes your blood to explode? etc.
The sequences with buildings collapsing and people running from dust clouds are direct taps into memories of footage from the September 11th attack on New York. The parts where the movie finally kicks in, and we glean overheard bits of dialog; spectators speculating on the origin of the blasts, all play upon insecurities stemming from that event. A lot of movies are doing this sort of thing lately to convey horror. Last year's The Mist, did something similar. But this movie is the most direct about it. Cloverfield capitalizes upon current events and fear of terrorism's unknown possibilities to great effect.
I mean, the scene with the smoke cloud and the people running from it, then afterward the people stumbling around in the haze, completely in shock were copped directly from 911 footage, shot for shot. IIRC, it's one of the more genuine scenes too, because instead of running with the camera where his head would be, Hud just kinda drops it to his side. You only really see the smoke cloud coming for a two seconds, if that. The buildings falling, same deal. Unlike Godzilla, which was a metaphor for the bomb, Coverfield is not just metaphor for terrorism, it employs imagery that was way more blatant a commentary... maybe even purely employed as an emotional wrench. I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing. It's just that typically, Sci-Fi and Horror social commentary is a bit more nuanced than the beat you all about the face and neck method used in Cloverfield. For an example of what I'm talking about, watch this 30 second clip:
The problems I had with the film aside, I had a great time. The shaky cam did make me a bit nauseous but I would say that added to the experience. The nausea that the love story caused me, on the other hand, took away from the experience. Cloverfield is good. It's fun and entertaining. It doesn't really work well with my scale since it doesn't compete on a few levels which I consider vital to standard movies... so I had to drop a few of the criteria from my scale and it averaged out around 8/10. The bottom but I will definitely recommend that everyone see it once.
Edit: Here's a fan video Myself and a friend made:
Labels: review
posted by pureevilmatt @ 22:54,
