CLOVERFIELD
You're at a going-away party, enjoying the upbeat atmosphere in the trendy SoHo loft,
maybe witnessing some little bursts of romantic drama around you, when suddenly-
BOOM! There's a distant explosion. Before you know it, something alive is destroying
buildings smaller than its mean-spirited self, rampaging past and above the now ruined loft
as it spews out human-being sized hungry offspring. It's a Godzilla movie told from the
point of view of a fleeing extra.
In CLOVERFIELD there are no scientists in lab coats trying to comprehend and
destroy the beast. Our protagonists are a group of confused, terrified, hip, twenty-
somethings. They don't know what is hitting them. One of these panicked yups is armed
with a video camera. He's taken it upon himself to document everything that happens as
he and his buddies venture back into the monster's path to rescue our hero’s girlfriend,
who is trapped in one of the many monster-ravished buildings.
Like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, CLOVERFIELD is presented to us via hand-held
consumer video camera. Very often, our vision is not steady. It's shaky, very often it
spurts. Despite news articles about CLOVERFIELD’s audience-members becoming dizzy
while subjected to all the big shaky screen camerawork, I found the shaky-cam gimmick
very restrained, paying more attention to the monster and the frightened humans in it's
path, rather than saying "Ohhh, lookie at the cool camera angles!". It wasn't so much like
BLAIR WITCH, it was more like LADY IN THE LAKE, the 40's noir film shown entirely from
the point of view of the protagonist, a private eye.
This is one of the few times in the giant monster genre where we watch the pain and
suffering of those caught in a city being ripped to shreds by a monster (The last time we
really got that was from the 1954 GODZILLA.) The tape-recording this onslaught is
erasing over is month-old home movie footage of our heroes in happier times, visiting
Coney Island. The big web uproar right now is that if you look way in back of our hero in
Coney Island, you can see something splash and explode over the distant Atlantic Ocean.
A meteor? Terrorists? At the very least, it's Producer J.J Abrams letting loose great
internet marketing to get people to see his movie more than once. Smart move, J.J. Your
film is doing quite well, but there are flaws.
While CLOVERFIELD is a fresh spin on the Godzilla formula, our heroes have
stumbled out of a typical sitcom. (Some critics dub this film as "Godzilla vs. Friends") How
many times have we seen movie friends, couples, whoever, bicker and fight, then we cue
up a major calamity (i.e natural disaster, kidnapping, a neighborhood-sized monster) and
now everybody values the precious moments we have together. Please, no more with this
clunky movie cliche! The film has its share of logic problems that may upset audience
members who want their monster banana split sprinkled with logic and accuracy. I won't
give anything away, but there's a way-too-friendly soldier who spews out secret plans to
our ordinary-citizen heroes. Their video camera takes quite the beating. (I got a few drops
of water on my HDV video camera and it shut down for a week!) However, you look at the
great rampaging monster movies: - KING KONG, GORGO, THEM!, - and logic is usually
out the window anyways! Overall, CLOVERFIELD delivers!
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CLOVERFIELD
Reviewed by Glenn Andreiev (from Area
GTA-72061, formally known as Long Island)
Produced by J.J Abrams
Written by Drew Goddard
Directed by Matt Reeves
Cast:
Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T.J Miller, Michael
Stahl-David, Mike Vogel, Odette Yustman
Paramount.
2008.
90 minutes
Reviewed by Glenn Andreiev (from Area
GTA-72061, formally known as Long Island)
Produced by J.J Abrams
Written by Drew Goddard
Directed by Matt Reeves
Cast:
Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T.J Miller, Michael
Stahl-David, Mike Vogel, Odette Yustman
Paramount.
2008.
90 minutes