Cloverfield

A week shy of a full year since the last one, I've finally thrown together a full fucking review. Call it a New Year's resolution of mine to get back on the horse, and forgive a style that differs greatly from that of a year ago. Maybe you'll like it better?

At any rate, here she be, posted in raw and unproofread form. At least three instances of misspellings or awkward grammar or your money back. Let me know what you think, yeah?

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Rob is perched on a fire escape in the early going of Cloverfield, attempting to justify his non-pursuit of the girl he clearly loves. “Things aren’t that simple,” he argues to his friends, and he’s as right as he is wrong. The statement turns out to be the working thesis of the film, as no more than five minutes pass before a distant explosion announces the arrival of something that will provide all the complication him and his friends can handle while simultaneously showing Rob how absolutely simple things really are.

Cloverfield is the first event movie of prepubescent (in every sense of the word) 2008, and arrives in theaters atop a wave of hype dating back to that mysteriously title-less teaser trailer attached to prints of Transformers. Little was known about the movie, though it was clear from a vicious beheading of Lady Liberty that something very large and/or powerful would be having its way with New York City. Among the many guesses and theories was the notion that Cloverfield would be a monster movie, an idea that – as obviously true as it may have seemed – has turned out to be as inaccurate as most of the rest.

There’s a monster, sure (oops – does that count as a “spoiler”? One can never be sure these days…), but the movie is less about his (her?) rampage than the effect of that rampage on our cast of characters. Rob and company find themselves neck deep in panic and confusion, and the audience is right there alongside them courtesy of Cloverfield’s unique narrative device; the audience isn’t watching a movie, but rather the video recorded on a camera discovered in the aftermath of the monster’s attack.

The audience is never privy to information that the cameraman isn’t privy to, and the production is surprisingly committed to keeping things that way (in fact, it’s likely that the characters know more than the audience does, seeing as the camera was not recording at all times). Denied is the insider’s understanding typically afforded to viewers, yet little is lost as a result. The terror – driven by the fear of the unknown – is more real, making (as in another great not-“monster movie” of late, The Host) the evidence of the monster’s past or approaching presence (footsteps, roars, distant explosions) scarier than the monster itself.

Suddenly paying no mind to the complications that had stopped him before (a job promotion and imminent move, for all anyone can tell), Rob elects to run into the epicenter of the monster’s attack to save Beth – the one he loves. As he and his friends move deeper into the city and begin to react – in believably distinct and different ways – to the horror unfolding around them, the movie begins to define itself. Cloverfield is not a monster movie: it’s a document of how one group of people was affected by the sudden presence of something they could not understand past all-but-paralyzing fear.

This idea is proven most effectively by the cleverest use of Cloverfield’s camcorder device. It is revealed early on that the events unfolding are being recorded over a tape of something that had special value to Rob (a trip to Coney Island with Beth). Short clips of this video are seen throughout the tape at points that make sense to anyone who has ever operated a camcorder (for example: when recording is stopped to review previously recorded footage of the monster, then reset). These clips provide heartbreaking exposition, and – as the longest of them appear at the beginning and end of the tape – illustrate how the monster’s appearance interrupted (physically, in the case of the tape) something beautiful.

However far these concepts of characterization and reduced screentime for the monster remove Cloverfield from being an action-packed monster romp is made irrelevant by the fact that the result is far more compelling than another Godzilla would have been. In the absence of the devouring of faceless hoards, real people – naïve and, in some cases, punished to the point of disregard – are out there getting shit done, monster be damned. That the sight of Rob holding Beth is more interesting than the eventual (and obligatory) full-on shot of the monster is the finest proof to be found in the pudding. Not typical fare for a blockbuster, and that’s just fine.

[ 8 / 10 ]