Cloverfield - Review

Director: Matt Reeves
Writer: Drew Goddard
Starring: Lizzy Caplan/T.J. Miller
Runtime: 1 hr 24 minutes

Cloverfield begins with a bunch of friends throwing a party for a young guy heading off to work as a Vice President of Something-Or-Other in Japan. It's told from the point of view of a friend's videocamera.

The camera marches its way through the party-goers, asking them to say a fond farewell to their buddy, and allowing us to meet all of the important characters in short order. Then, boom.

Manhattan shakes from the impact of...something. And then something else. And then the Statue of Liberty's head goes rolling down the street, a building collapses, and the characters are saying what the hell is this?

Before seeing Cloverfield, I was asked if I had heard anything about it. I was told that the less you knew, the better the movie would be. I'm not sure it made any difference, but if you're not willing to hear at least a little bit about the film, you should stop reading now.

Cloverfield is a monster movie. The writers' pitch probably went like this: "It's Godzilla crossed with Blair Witch Project." To which the big shot producers said, "A monster movie shot on cheap video and starring nobodies? Won't cost us a nickle. Green light, baby!"

Godzilla crossed with Blair Witch is about as much as you need to know about the film, though I looked at it as The Blair Monster Project, which will soon be followed by Blair Urban Killer Project. That's The Poughkeepsie Tapes, a movie due out next month. It uses the "lost" homemade tapes of a serial killer to tell the whole story. ("Blair Witch in the city, starring nobodies and shot on cheap video? Green light, baby!")

Because Cloverfield is told from the point-of-view of one camera, it has a hard time doing what it is meant to do: be real. The drunk kid that holds the camera during the going-away party is also the film's cinematographer. He doubles as comic relief, because he is a moron. But he can't be that stupid, because his camerawork is incredibly good.

The camera focuses on just the right things at the right times, and the guy's arm never seems to get tired. Not only that, but he must have brought spare batteries with him, because he rolls tape for over an hour, and uses the camera's light when confronted by dark spaces. Whatever camera he's using, I want one.

Maybe this is quibbling on my part, but I'm not so sure. Yes, monster movies are by their very nature unbelievable, but only in regards to the monster. Human beings should still be human beings unless you're going for a whacked-out sci-fi.

Cloverfield bends a lot of rules and even steals a couple. If you know anything about horror films, then you know that being bitten by something means you're a goner. Nevermind having you're arm chewed off. George Romero's zombie rules now apply all over the place: if something creepy bites you, it means you're going to die from a weird infection, or you'll turn into something unpleasant.

The film had me pondering something else, though talking about it bores my friends: I am utterly convinced that for Hollywood, September 11th, 2001, never happened. It was simply removed from the calendar, or was never there in the first place. Blame it on the time zones or whatever you want, but people in LA didn't tune in to CNN on that morning 7 years ago. Al Queda aren't mentioned in more than two or three anti-war films a year, and 9/11 almost never.

To my mind, 9/11 was a pretty seminal event in American history, right up there with Pearl Harbor and the first issue of Playboy. But not to Hollywood.

Let me put it this way: let's say you're at a party in Manhattan. New York is your home town, and you're having a great night. Then there's a loud explosion. Then another. You run to roof, just in time to see a massive fireball roll into the sky, coming from the harbor. You avoid the falling debris by running out into the street. The Statue of Liberty gets decapitated. A skyscraper falls down and a massive gush of ash and dust rolls down the street like a wave, forcing you to run and hide in a drug store. Then all the lights go out. Do you not think that one person out of the dozens around you might mention the last time something like this happened in their hometown. Like, say, 9/11? Al Queda? Terrorist attack, so forth?

In the world of Cloverfield, none of these New Yorkers would have the foggiest clue what you're talking about. They never once make mention of that fairly memorable day in their city's history. It's so conspicuous by its absence that it's obtuse. And yes, this is before the characters know that it's a monster screwing up the skyline.

I remember watching the director's commentary for Bourne Supremacy. In it, the producers said that when filming the movie, they had to cut out an exploding building. 9/11, the producer said, had put the kibosh on buildings falling down in movies. "You will never see another building fall down in a movie.”

Maybe he only meant "never in New York City." If so, never lasted 7 years.

I don't have a problem with showing buildings falling down in films. But when "those tragic events" can't even be mentioned during scenes that could have been taken from NBC's stock footage of 9/11, filmmakers' views and ignorance become obscene.

With that rant out of the way, let me say that Cloverfield is derivative and hokey, but it will entertain you for an hour-and-a-half if you need to kill time.

Photos: Yahoo Movies