The hype machine has been mercifully turned off; it’s now time to see if producer J.J. Abrams managed to pull off a first-person giant monster movie with the eagerly anticipated Cloverfield.
There’s not much story to recount. Photogenic twenty-something Rob has received a promotion to “vice president” of a company in Japan. His photogenic friends – including his estranged girlfriend Beth - decide to throw a going away party for him in their swanky loft in Manhattan. Then a giant monster attacks.
The first ten minutes of the film are mostly annoying set up during the party. But with the first percussive tremor of the arriving monster, the film propels forward breathlessly. Director Matt Reeves and his crew gracefully choreograph the action despite the handheld camera technique used throughout. This is the first film since The Blair Witch Project to successfully use this “found footage” gimmick, and several sequences place the audience in harm’s way most effectively.
While Abrams has often denied any direct allusion to 9/11, the film’s true intentions become clear at the very beginning: the kids all run into the streets, crazy with fear, when the monster rips into a building right in front of them. The building collapses, and a giant cloud of debris whooses down the street and right at us. It’s not only a nearly perfect copy of that horrible day in 2001 when we saw ghostly people running in the streets covered in dust amid floating paper; it’s vibrant and bold moviemaking.
The characters and the actors who portray them are pointless; these are not characters as much as they are various incarnations of the human survival instinct. Many of the plot machinations, when considered, are fairly standard and fairly stupid. However, in the moment, irrationality gives way to visceral thrills. This film has plenty of that to spare.
WARNING: Several people had to leave the theater due to motion sickness. The handheld camerawork, while decent, is still dizzying.
I don’t think that Cloverfield will stand up to repeated viewings just as Blair Witch does not. A film like this is experienced rather than viewed, swallowed rather than savored. However, for that hour and a half, Cloverfield delivers powerful thrills.
I thought for sure that you would hate this. This is a surprising review. I think you just wanted to be like your idol Harry Knowles, so you had to like it.
Hmmm…I was not going to waste my time with this one, but I usually trust Ray with movies (not a chance in hell I will ever trust him in regards to music) so may just go see Cloverfield. Thanks Ray.
j
This movie was absolutley horrible. I used to trust Ray’s reviews. Now Ray owes me 2 hours of my life back!
Actually, I liked it a bit more than you, Ray, and I think it would stand up for repeated viewings more than Blair Witch. I had a blast with this movie and even though intellectually I was feeling how thin the characters and plot contrivances were, it never bothered me for a moment.
A comparison to Blair Witch is inevitable, of course, but what I find interesting in the differences between these two films is that the Blair Witch characters choose to enter the woods and document their story, and are therefore somewhat to blame for their own deaths, for having the hubris to believe so casually that they can expose the unknown.
The Clover-yuppies are thrust into this horror unwillingly. To my mind, that puts me a bit more in tune with them, sympathetically speaking.
@ Burbanked – I agree about the differences in characters between the two films. However, the main device of both films – the hand-held, all-seeing camera – makes more sense in BLAIR WITCH than it does in CLOVERFIELD. Hud the cameraman for CLOVERFIELD needed to put the camera down and run his fat ass off. It’s just not that realistic to keep filming and framing great shots while fleeing for your life.
Having said that, the film does a great job of moving so fast that you barely notice these obvious problems. However, I think there will be few that actually want to sit and watch it over and over again. It is, after all, a gimmick movie, and, like BLAIR WITCH, I think there will be a certain amount of backlash because of it.
No doubt about that backlash, Ray; it’s already in full swing. David Poland is just one critic who has decimated Cloverfield, and although I’m not a fan of his reviews, it seems overly brutal.
And I never saw Blair Witch a second time. Maybe ’cause they never showed the monster.