Review: Cloverfield

No allusions to 9/11 here foks.

From the mind of J. J. Abrams, we have Cloverfield. A monstrously hyped early release of this year. While I never cared much for his work on the LOST series, he had to have writing talent with the amount of people speculating about this one... Right? Perhaps people were impatient waiting for the next Blair Witch hit, or a fantastic american-made whack at monster films after the largely disappointing 1998's Godzilla. The fact that all that everyone had to go on was a title, a vague trailer, and a release date...certainly helped.

Whatever the reason, people were on this film like maggots on a corpse. I couldn't help but join them and see what all the fuss was about. With no outside narrative of any sort, and the complete perspective being from the point of view of the main characters, the style of the film greatly intrigued me. As it's only from these sorts of angles that you can truly get a sense of scale.

While Hud, the main wielder our window to their perils, did capture a decent few shots of the creature, he largely insisted on shaking the camera back and forth between his friends to catch their own reactions. This was as if the camera was duct taped to his head, as he couldn't just look at them quickly as he documented the catastrophe. In the realistic tone of the movie, this makes little sense, and made me lose touch with the concept of it being found footage, making me remember it's a movie.

I felt as if there was a tad too much focus on the people at the beginning of the film. The movie tries to juggle relationships and friendships of the people involved with the situation of the monster in an attempt to connect me to them emotionally, and instead of a good monster movie, I ended up with an alright drama and an alright monster movie.


"Hi mom!"

The special effects are good, for as much as you can see of them. It's hard to make out imperfections in the CGI with an epileptic nine year old on a sugar rush at the camera, but it's convincing. The creature apparently dragged little parasites onto New York with it, and these also attack the main characters. It helps to have the looming sense of danger of these things when they're waiting underground and lollygagging about their personal dilemmas, and you get no real idea of what havoc the monster is causing outside.

There isn't much to the storyline. What you can scrape up is that the monster may have been created by the military, and besides that there is sadly more you know about Hud and his friends. While this might be a good balance to some, and helps to aid the mystery of this creature, I felt just as out of the loop as the people involved did. This only made me more curious, while the film never gave anything more than a few hints and teases.

The focus of the characters and their drama, while giving decent dialog and acting, gave me the sense that I was missing out on the big picture. It made sense that they weren't able to watch the monster's doings constantly, it being from the perspective of fairly regular individuals like you and me, but then why not the perspective of someone who does know what it's all about? Why not someone associated with the military? The only information you'll gain from these characters will be ramblings of conspiracy from Hud. Which, I'll grant it, were entertaining and lighthearted for a film of it's nature.


Sorry Lovecraft fans, no Cthulhu this time.

Cloverfield is a good film. But as a monster movie specifically, it was a disappointment. The tense and realistic action sequences arn't enough to save it from it's own meaningless storytelling of the main characters, and the heavy mystery of the monster will only serve as a sly bait for the sequel, should they make one. Even with budgets of thirty million dollars nowdays, I still find myself returning to the Godzilla and monster films of old.

Perhaps this perspective just wasn't meant for monster flicks? Or maybe it'll be a long time before one is done right. Until then, I can only recommend 2006's The Host to rekindle your faith in recent monster films. Cloverfield isn't terrible, it's lackluster. It teases you with tastes of well-done action and suspense, but then leaves you starving for information and relevant story. An admirable attempt worthy of only three of our five Konatas.