Producer J. J. Abrams (“Lost,” “MI:3”) and director Matt Reeves set out to make a home-video style movie about a giant monster that attacks Manhattan, and with “Cloverfield,” that is exactly what they did.
Don’t kid yourself – this movie is “The Blair Witch Project” meets “Godzilla,” plain and simple, but it delivers the goods.
Doing a feature film with first-person camera is a near-impossible feat, so I tip my hat to Abrams and Reeves. The technique usually comes off as tedious, but these guys were clever enough to make it work. Other than the few times I was tempted to scream at the screen, “Just ditch the camera and run, you moron!” the gimmick told the story successfully and unfolded at an enjoyable pace.
One problem, however, was that the main characters were exclusively inane supermodel-looking yuppies. In fact, the only member of the cast who didn’t look like he had just stepped off a magazine cover was the guy holding the camera, and we didn’t see much of him. Not that there’s anything wrong with being really, really good looking, but it clashed with the movie’s “regular Joe running away from the monster” vibe.
But in the end, “Cloverfield” is not a movie about people, it’s a movie about big ol’ monsters, and it delivered on the two main selling points for monster movies: The first is the suspense leading up the reveal. “Cloverfield” was smart enough to tease out glimpses of the monster until about halfway through the movie, providing the audience with some real tension to chew on.
The second – and most important – selling point is seeing the monster crush the puny humans below and lay waste to the city. The monster does not heart NYC. Once the monster-mash begins, it squashes, rips, chews and burns its way across town.
The makers of “Cloverfield” obviously wanted to make “the big monster movie of the 21st century.” Their attempts to make it contemporary work to varying degrees. All the main characters have their own MySpace pages, and the Internet is littered with clues about the movie and viral marketing. Abrams did “Lost,” so he knows how to stir the pot.
A lot of the imagery of New York under siege was snatched directly from news footage from Sept.11, as well as a splash of Katrina deja vu with scenes of looting and anarchy. These touches were interesting, but made the excitement at watching the monster wreak havoc a little awkward.
I laughed at the extent to which they took their “YouTube generation” premise, with people snapping pictures of the Statue of Liberty’s severed head on their camera phones, until a friend pointed out to me how much footage of Sept. 11 and Katrina there is out there. A lot of people react to disaster by grabbing their cameras.
As for me, when the giant crab-people attack, I’m dropping the camera and getting out of there.
Kevin Corcoran can be reached at [email protected].
