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Movie Review by:
Jim "Good Old JR" Rutkowski
Directed by: Matt Reeves
Written by: Drew Goddard
Starring: Lizzy Caplan, T.J. Miller, Michael Stahl-David
Running time: 85 minutes
Released: 01/18/08
Rated PG-13 for violence, terror and
disturbing images. |
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"...the only thing
surprising about the picture turns out to be how
unsurprising it is."
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The studio has kept close wraps on “Cloverfield,”
the new project from fanboy favorite J.J. Abrams (though here he’s
merely the producer), hoping that the sense of mystery surrounding
the big-budget disaster movie will spark interest and insure a
humungous opening-weekend turnout. But the only thing surprising
about the picture turns out to be how unsurprising it is.
Also—despite massive special effects—how boring. It turns out to be
nothing more than a monster-trashes-New-York flick told from the
perspective of a small group of unlucky people caught on camcorder
during the mayhem. Even Abrams seems to think that it would be fair
to call it something like “The Blair Godzilla Project.”
The script could have been scribbled on the back of a napkin. For
the first twenty minutes we’re taken, videographer-POV style, into
the preparations that Jason (Mike Vogel) and his girlfriend Lily
(Jessica Lucas) are making for a surprise farewell party in honor of
his brother Robbie (Michael Stahl-David), who’s decamping for a job
in Japan, and the party itself, where Jason fobs off the job of
recording “testimonials” from the guests to his dim-bulb buddy Hud
(T.J. Miller). It’s through his implausibly intrusive filming of
intimate moments that we learn that he’s got a crush on Marlene (Lizzy
Caplan) and that Robbie’s besotted with Beth (Odette Yustman), a
hottie he’s recently had sex with but then dumped because of his
imminent departure. When she comes to the party with another guy,
Robbie goes off the rails, and Beth leaves speedily. All of this
feels like Godzilla meets One Tree Hill.
In the middle of this domestic fuss—which we can’t care about in the
slightest because the characters are just a bunch of self-absorbed,
navel-gazing twenty-something's barely sketched in—an apparent
earthquake occurs, sending everyone streaming into the streets. But
it turns out to be even worse: Manhattan is being wracked with
explosions and collapsing buildings and soon police and military are
evacuating people and bombing something we only glimpse through the
haze. (All this is being filmed by Hud, whose work is our window to
the event.) But amidst all the hullabaloo Robbie becomes obsessed
with traipsing deep into the danger zone, with Lily, Marlene and the
ever-filming Hud in tow, to rescue Beth, from whom he’s gotten a
call indicating that she’s lying injured in her high-rise apartment.
The driving force of the plot thus becomes—gasp!—a love story
involving completely vacuous people who act very stupidly, and the
rest of “Cloverfield” records how they fare.
I’m not going to reveal what the source of all the destruction is;
the secrecy about it is what’s driving the publicity campaign.
Suffice it to say that if you’re expecting something
ground-breaking, in anything other than the most literal sense,
you’re going to be very disappointed. The effects are impressive
enough, though the grungy, jittery video perspective, with lots of
grainy footage and blurred images as cameraman Hud flails about,
make them frequently indistinct. (It must have taken a lot of money
to make a movie that looks this crappy.) And one can’t help but
wonder how ComEd keeps the lights on almost everywhere despite all
the calamity—even in underground subway stations.
The use of the shaky hand held camera is overused here to the
extreme. For those of
 you that found yourselves nauseated when
watching Blair Witch, then stay away. This reviewer foundhimself
with a case of motion sickness at the halfway point. Shaky-cam can
be effective when a film maker realizes that it is a method for
accentuating action. You need to look no further than director Paul Greengrass's Jason Bourne films for exemplary usage of handheld. In
Cloverfield it IS the action. The camera bobs and weaves from
beginning to end. There is never a single moment in the film that
has a steady shot.
The larger issue, though, is whether in the post-9/11 age the use of
such imagery about collapsing buildings and smashed Big Apple
landmarks in the service of what’s basically a glorified B-movie
shlockfest isn’t just a tad tasteless. Inevitably the filmmakers
present the initial thuds and distant flare-ups in ways designed to
suggest the possibility of terrorism rather than monster cliché, and
that might leave you feeling a mite queasy.
But apart from those considerations, for a picture like this to
provide anything but a few vicarious visual shocks, it requires
characters you can empathize with, and they’re not just in short
supply here—they’re simply absent. Apart from a few jokey lines for
Hud, the dialogue is amazingly drab, sounding like the empty-headed
drivel such dopey people might actually say in a night of drunken
revelry—which might make for authenticity but offers very little
emotional interest. And the young actors haven’t the chops to add
anything to their threadbare parts beyond their naturally photogenic
qualities and a generalized sense of desperation.
The end result is a movie that’s like a cinematic shell game that
promises much but delivers little. It turns out that what the
filmmakers have under that last cup may look gargantuan but is
really pea-sized, a molehill dressed up like a mountain.
After seeing Cloverfield, I was so frustrated and disappointed that
I felt like I needed a palate cleanser. I wanted to immediately go
home and watch South Koreas The Host. Now theres a great, new
monster movie. We see the creature early on and in broad daylight.
It serves as a potent social and political metaphor for Korea. We
come to care deeply for the characters. And through the course of
the film we learn how the creature came about, what it is doing, and
how it lives. If you love monster movies and start to feel the urge
to see Cloverfield, I urge you to go rent The Host instead. Or at
the very least, have The Host waiting for you at home for when you
come back from Cloverfield feeling let down.
Diehard Abrams fans may still find a way to like this movie (as they
have found a way to embrace the black smoke entity on Lost), and the
frenzy of attention the film has received will probably make it
profitable. But this movie is unlikely to go down in history as a
classic monster movie. |
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CLOVERFIELD © 2008 Bad Robot, Paramount Pictures
All Rights Reserved
Review © 2008 Alternate Reality, Inc. |
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