Cloverfield Review
Cloverfield
Directed by: Matt Reeves
Written by: Drew Goddard
Starring: Michael Stahl-David, Jessica Lucas, T.J. Miller, Mike Vogel, Lizzy Caplan, Odette Yustman
Ever since the mysterious trailer popped up before Transformers last summer, everyone’s been buzzing about Cloverfield. Releasing a trailer for a movie with no name was, in retrospect, one of the smartest things anyone has ever done, marketing-wise (of course, having J.J. Abrams’ name on it didn’t hurt either). Some people have been pretty skeptical about this movie specifically because of the focus on marketing, but I have admired it for exactly the same reason. Yes, they’ve been trying to generate hype, but they’ve also been creating a story outside the film. I also dig the fact that, if nothing else, they were able keep it a secret from a society that has become obsessed with knowing everything about anything with the click of a button.
At this point, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to discuss the basic premise. We all probably know that this is a monster movie in the vein of Godzilla (a “kaiju” flick for those in the know) viewed from ground level. It is shot from a single camera perspective as a group of people in New York City get caught up in the destruction, and do their best to survive. Much like The Blair Witch Project, we are told that the footage we are about to watch is from a tape that was recovered after the fact.
As the movie opens, a bunch of friends are throwing a farewell party for Rob, who has just got a new job and is moving away to Japan. They initially came up with a believable reason to have the camera there, by having one of Rob’s friends walking around getting testimonials from the attendees. He is also recording over top of another tape that has some quick flashbacks to a day that Rob spent with a girl named Beth. This was an interesting way to set up some of the relationships, but after the opening 15-minute soap opera however, I was getting antsy… I wanted to see some action, not twenty-something models getting jealous over who slept with who.
Thankfully, once the monster hits, plenty of pandemonium and chaos ensues. Those initial moments are extremely compelling as everyone wonders what is going on and they run to the roof of the building for a better look. It’s impossible not to think of 9/11 at this point, and the movie taps into some of the same feelings of confusion and terror. Eventually they realize that they need to get out of Manhattan as quickly as possible — until Rob gets a call on his cell phone from Beth, who is trapped in her apartment.
So here’s the thing… if The Blair Witch Project gave you motion sickness, there’s a good chance this will too. The camera is frantically moving around pretty much all the time, and I was starting to feel nauseous myself, even though I am normally not bothered by it. This was one of the biggest complaints about The Blair Witch Project back when it first came out, and yet, it seems that people are a little more willing to endure a movie like this nowadays. One possible explanation is that the images of 9/11 and the era of YouTube have acclimatized the masses to unstable, grainy video footage. That said, Cloverfield is more of a Hollywood action movie trying to disguise itself as verite-style filmmaking than anything else.
This did bother me to an extent. When it works, the movie evokes a visceral response that very few films can match. But it doesn’t always work. In Cloverfield it’s very obvious that everything is scripted and the camera is being moved in a deliberately haphazard way. The perfect lighting is distracting and the sound effects are so powerful that they take you out of the moment at times. The CG effects, while impressive, are never completely seamless. I’m sure many viewers welcomed these big budget production values (and there were moments where they make good use of them), but I would easily sacrifice them in exchange for a greater feeling of realism.
I suppose Cloverfield is ultimately a movie full of trade-offs. We are given a limited perspective to this city-wide disaster in order to make the experience more involving and intense. At some points, it feels frustrating to be stuck on the ground, moving around by foot. To offset this, they try to communicate the bigger picture by adding news footage on TV, and a helicopter viewpoint later on. At times it’s hard to feel like the main characters are directly endangered by such a large-scale threat, but they rectify this by adding some smaller, more scaled down moments like the subway scene, which I thought was pretty effective. (Of course, they used the damn night vision trick that EVERYONE is using lately.)
One could certainly nitpick about things like the acting, which was pretty stilted and uneven, particularly with the military personnel (how the heck did the military mobilize so quickly anyway?). The annoying wisecracks coming from behind the camera throughout the movie were also a bit much. Some people might complain that they wanted to see the monster more, but this definitely has more money shots than The Blair Witch Project (even if BWP is still the superior flick). All in all, none of these things bothered me as much as they might have in a different film. I was hooked and wanted to see what would happen next.
Looking back on Cloverfield, I had a lot of fun with it and I certainly appreciate both the concept and the effort that was made to bring it to life. It will probably go down in history as more of an interesting experiment than a milestone, but even with its flaws, it’s hard to deny the impact that this kind of storytelling has on a viewer. Anyone who is a big fan of monster movies should enjoy the novelty of seeing it from a new perspective. Those looking for a truly terrifying or moving experience may find Cloverfield comes up a bit short, but it’s still a pretty unique experience, and one that’s well worth catching at the theatre. — Sean
SCORE: 
Recommended If You Like: The Blair Witch Project, The Host, United 93, War of the Worlds
Comments (15)
My biggest complaint is that they all should have died at one point near the end. I don’t want to spoil it so I won’t really go into it but it pissed me off that they lived.
Posted by John on January 19th, 2008SPOILERS
it didnt bother me, I expected they were dead at first but I have no idea of the circumstances of their crash.
And for the record, people survive helicopter crashes all the time. Heres one from just last week:
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/321581/1/.html
I’m not sure what makes a military helicopter less secure than a commercial aircraft. if all those people can survive for the “Lost” island, I can suspend disbelief for a monster movie helicopter crash.
Posted by Goon on January 19th, 2008I loved Cloverfield. I somehow managed not to have really high expectations for this film despite the hype and my love of monster movies, and maybe that had something to do with it. The film didn’t give a 100% realistic feeling and was obviously cinematic despite the handheld-ness, but that didn’t bother me at all. I liked all of the cameraman’s quips, I had no problem with any of the CG, and I recognized the subway scene as being similar to some other films (such as 28 Weeks Later), but it didn’t affect my opinion at all. In my eyes Cloverfield was a complete success. If I had to lodge a complaint it would actually be that we saw a little too much of the monster. I’m thinking of a particular long-lasting upshot toward the end. 4 out of 4 for me.
Posted by Rian on January 19th, 2008I think a big influence for this movie was Half-Life (the original). The game tells the story in a way that parallels this movie quite a bit.
I think the shaky cam was way overdone. I could imagine the director yelling “now look at the ground and shake the camera side to side!”
There were also annoying strobes of light in some scenes that made me wish I could change the channel.
I think the most clever thing that I saw in the movie was how they slowly upgraded the video quality until it reached a quality that we are used to in theatres.
Posted by dario on January 20th, 2008Regarding…
“The CG effects, while impressive, are never completely seamless.”
I don’t know, what specific scenes are you talking about? It all looked pretty darn seamless to me.
Posted by greyv on January 20th, 2008The Statue of Liberty head was a big one, and since it’s the first thing you really see, it kind of had me questioning everything from that point on.
Posted by Sean on January 20th, 2008I loved this film. The theory is that the military was there so quickly because they knew about the monster before hand.
Posted by paul on January 20th, 2008Sean, what specifically about the head of the statue of liberty was bad CGI? I thought it looked very realistic, I mean it was relatively accurate to the scale and everything about it was as realistic as you could possibly get. CGI was topnotch. The movie was made for only 25-30 million and the CGI of this movie puts I am Legend’s CGI made for more then $150 million to shame.
I absolutely loved the movie. This is possibly the best monster movie ever made. JJ Abrams’s Hollywood stock just went up exponentially.
Posted by Jason on January 20th, 2008It was subtle things like the weight of it, how it moved and the lighting that looked fake to me. Don’t get me wrong, the Statue of Liberty head didn’t make or break the movie for me. It was a small detail, and I can forgive it since it’s such a cool image in the first place. I’m just saying there were a lot of little flaws that added up and pulled me out of the movie from time to time. I will definitely agree that the effects blow I Am Legend out of the water.
Calling it the best monster movie ever made is also a pretty bold statement, but I am definitely a Cloverfield supporter. I may try and see it again sometime this week.
Posted by Sean on January 21st, 2008***SPOILERS***
Good review. And good movie. I really enjoyed it and think the “experiment” worked well. I was hoping that the one building with the girl would fall down, but looking back it would have been cheesy to get back to safety just as the building falls. It would take all of the realism out of it.
If I had to change one thing though, it would have to be the credits. I’m cool with the “we just found this video laying around” idea of the presentation, but at this point in the film, the credits, there is almost zero feeling of the viewer still feeling in the movie. They should have put music in (at least ambiance) when the words started rolling. And I have no idea why I feel so strongly about that, lol.
I felt like Cloverfield was full of references, almost like an ‘homage film.’ You could describe the movie as “X mixed with Y” with about 20 different films. Not a bad thing, just saying. As far as monster movies, I don’t think it beats The Host, Gojira, or Alien. But definitely beats all the junky stuff out there. But the monster itself is one of the best!
Posted by joe on January 21st, 2008I think that a little thought on the subject would reveal that Cloverfield, while quite good, is not the best monster movie ever made. Let us not forget Alien, The Thing, or even Predator.
Several months ago I wrote into the blog to ask opinions about the state of the monster movie genre, my opinion being that it had essentially ceased to exist in the past decade or so. However, in the past (approximately) two years there have been four films that I believe may be showing a positive resurgence of the genre: Slither, The Host, The Mist, and Cloverfield. Here’s hoping that this is only the beginning.
Posted by Rian on January 21st, 2008Rian, among the list of new ones, I’d but it above the Host, but probably not above Slither.
Posted by Goon on January 21st, 2008SPOILERS: “My biggest complaint is that they all should have died at one point near the end. I don’t want to spoil it so I won’t really go into it but it pissed me off that they lived.”
I thought that rob and his girlfreind did die, i thought they got crushed by the rocks.
Posted by Drew on January 21st, 2008I got this movie as part of a freebee for my cable subscription, you know, pick a couple of free movies each month yadda yadda. Well against a lot of advice to avoid it like a good dose of the clap, I made the conscious decision to give it a go. Well I got totally screwed didn’t I. This lemon sucked an hour and a half out of my life and I want to kill someone responsible so I can feel better again. I thought Battlefield Earth got pretty damn low but nope…someone actually managed to make a crappier movie. Am I glad I didn’t fork out admission to the movies when it first came out. JJ Abrams needs neutering so he can’t sporn anymore of his kind.
Posted by Coop on August 31st, 2008Sporn! ha.
Posted by Nick Robertson on January 30th, 2010Leave a Reply