Cloverfield

Sev­eral months have I antic­i­pated Clover­field; even while it was known only by its release date 01-18-2008, I was hyped up over the movie. Actu­ally, I remem­ber dis­tinctly spec­u­lat­ing about the movie based upon the ear­li­est teasers; was it a Godzilla remake? a Voltron movie? or some­thing else entirely?

And some­thing else entirely is exactly what this film deliv­ered. I can­not say that the film was sub­stan­tially more than what was shown in the pre­views because it wasn’t; I give the film­mak­ers kudos for giv­ing exactly what was promised within the trail­ers — noth­ing more, noth­ing less.

We are thrown into the world some New York friends ((No, not those Friends.)) throw­ing a good­bye party for Rob who is to be leav­ing for Japan to take a job. One of these friends, Hud, ((I’m unsure if “Hud” is a play off of HUD or not, but as the cam­era­man for the bulk of the film, it would cer­tainly fit.)) is given the job of doc­u­ment­ing the night so that Rob would be able to relive those moments with his friends any­time with the ease of press­ing play.

These intro­duc­tory moments of the film serve not only to intro­duce us to the char­ac­ters and the uncer­tain rela­tion­ship sta­tus of Rob and Beth, but it also gives us a chance to accli­mate our­selves to the film’s style — when I say that the film was recorded on a hand-held cam­era, I mean that and every­thing that goes along with it — the camera’s view shakes, spins around, and cuts in odd places as the film’s char­ac­ters oper­ate the device.

This may make some peo­ple nau­se­ated, but I do not hold that against the film. Rather, the style worked and deliv­ered a sense of urgency, sus­pense, and real­ness through­out the movie which oth­er­wise would not have been there.

Now be care­ful: Clover­field doesn’t try to win you over with super­star act­ing or art­ful direct­ing; it is a no-holds-barred look into the per­spec­tive of a few twenty-somethings who hap­pen to be in Man­hat­tan on the wrong night. We are right there with them, along for the ride of their lives.

I’ve heard the style of the movie com­pared to that of a first-person video game, except instead of car­ry­ing around a vast array of high tech weaponry, we’re armed to the teeth with a video cam­era. I really like this com­par­i­son because it is easy for me to iden­tify with the char­ac­ter I am sup­posed to be in first-person games ((In that regard, I’ve been James Bond more often than any Hol­ly­wood actor, ever.)), and just as that draws you deeper into the plot of the game, so to does the first-person per­spec­tive bring us deeper into the movie.

Is the plot deep enough to immerse your­self into? It’s by no means an ocean, but it doesn’t pre­tend to be. There’s a mod­est love story, a freak­ing huge mon­ster attack­ing a city which freak­ing huge mon­sters seem attracted to, ((Case in point: The Stay-Puft Marsh­mal­low Man.)) lots of explo­sions, even more screams, and ginor­mous par­a­sites. ((It’s okay; lice is nice.))

Clover­field kept me excited through­out its ninety-minute run time. The actors did a great job of por­tray­ing ordi­nary peo­ple in an extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stance; they did such a good job, in fact, that no sin­gle per­for­mance seemed to out­shine any of the oth­ers. The char­ac­ters seemed real, and we get to know noth­ing more about them save for what you would ordi­nar­ily get out of some­one within just over an hours’ time while flee­ing cer­tain death at the hands of a mon­ster that makes Godzilla look like Yoshi.

Stop read­ing now if you do not wish cer­tain aspects of the movie to be spoiled. If you stop read­ing here, then suf­fice it to say that I highly rec­om­mend Clover­field to any­one look­ing for ninety-minutes of excit­ing, edge-of-your-seat movie.

And a mon­strous men­ace it was, so much so that there is some spec­u­la­tion that a bit of whis­pered dia­logue at the end of the cred­its states that the crea­ture is still alive — after hav­ing had nuclear weaponry used against it. Tra­di­tional weaponry — from bul­lets to a vari­ety of explo­sives — seemed to have no effect what­so­ever on the crea­ture, and so one is left won­der­ing what it is… Is it a crea­ture of old Earth, as the Bal­rog was to Mid­dle Earth? Is it a god akin to those in Lovecraft’s lore? ((Two ref­er­ences to lit­er­a­ture I have not read in a row; I really need to read more so I can feel bet­ter about some of these com­par­isons.)) What could be so invincible?

We are not told, nor are we pre­sented with any hope that the crea­ture can be stopped. With­out any Kryp­to­ni­ans, Ultra­zords, or Head & Shoul­ders in sight, we can only won­der how the tide is even­tu­ally turned.

What is obvi­ous is that at some point, the after­math of Man­hat­tan is able to be explored and the mem­ory card from Rob’s cam­era is recov­ered. Cen­tral Park at that point is code­named “Clover­field,” and (mostly) Hud’s footage details the inci­dent. Does the fight against the crea­tures con­tinue on? We are not told.

And that kind of uncer­tain end­ing worked really well with this film, which I highly rec­om­mend to any­one look­ing for an excit­ing movie.