Review of the Film Cloverfield (15).
Warning: this review contains some plot spoilers. The rating is out of five stars.
I have not yet seen the similarly filmed motion picture The Blair Witch Project, and how similar the two films are in style I do not know… but whatever the case, I have never seen anything like Cloverfield. I haven’t been so thoroughly ‘in to’ a film at the cinema for a long long time; much of the film caused me to make use only of the edge of the seat that I had paid for, and if you could have seen my face during most of it then I would probably have appeared to you like some kind of demented and euphoric drug addict. So intensely thrilling were many scenes that I couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear, making my cheeks begin to cramp. The handheld style of shooting makes the film so immersive that at times I could almost genuinely feel the fear that the characters were feeling, and feel as though I was an invisible companion of theirs. The tension is so nerve-racking so that watching Cloverfield must be at least as good for your heart as taking a brisk walk supposedly is. The film really flies past, not just because it runs for only eighty-five minutes, but because it is so thoroughly exciting!
The format in which the story is told is that the film that we are seeing is merely amateur video footage discovered by the military in an area of Manhattan ‘formerly known as Central Park’… Said story is about a group of young New York city-slickers having their goodbye party for one of their number, (the lead character Rob Hawkins,) rudely interrupted by some kind of Godzilla-like monster attacking the city! What a wonderful recipe for fun. The country to which Rob was planning on moving to is Japan, and I think that that is a very appropriate nod of thanks by Drew Goddard the scriptwriter to the country from which the character of Godzilla first originated. Another interesting reference (of a kind) to the original Japanese Godzilla film Gojira (1954), is that in that film Godzilla is caused to appear and attack Japan by American nuclear weapons testing, whereas in this film it is hinted (very subtly indeed…) that the monster was caused to appear by a falling Japanese satellite… see if you can spot the clue (and then look it up online) in the very last shot of the film. So originally, America caused the monster to attack Japan, but now Japan causes it to attack America. See?
The actions of the creature and the way in which the authorities attempt to handle the situation are done so convincingly that you really forget that the premise of a skyscraper sized monster rampaging through a city is really a very fantastical idea, and together with the ‘it’s all real’ approach of the handheld camera work supposedly shot by one of the main characters, creates such a convincing level of virtual reality that surely couldn’t have been any better unless the film was shot in 3D, but that wouldn’t have fitted with the film’s concept because there aren’t yet any video cameras available on the market that can shoot in 3D.
Cloverfield works almost perfectly as a horror/adventure film, and I dare you not to be thoroughly impressed by the bold ending; but it does, naturally, have it’s flaws. The main problem is the horribly stupid and annoying main characters! To put a good spin on it, perhaps the filmmakers wanted that to be so in order to make the film more believable and realistic, but at times I just wanted to shout at them to get on with it or to wake up! So, the lead characters are a bunch of dumb rich kids, but their reactions and decisions and so forth are believable enough, and the performances of the actors more than sincere enough to make this a sufficiently glazed over flaw to render it not too big a problem in the overall scheme of things. Aside from that, the only other slight weakness that I noticed are a couple of rather too obviously set-up scenarios, in the sense that they are obviously done to produce the most drawn out feelings of shock and horror in the audience as possible. But this is also forgivable, as in the end theses scenarios are executed by the director Matt Reeves, (and of course the editor Kevin Stitt,) in an extremely taut and urgent fashion meaning that you won’t have time think too much about what you know is going to happen. Another thing which makes this more forgivable is that towards the end and probably even as it progresses throughout most if not all of it’s running time, the film becomes less and less predictable, building to a quality finale that is both frantic and chaotic in all the right ways. I did think that perhaps it should have ended a few minutes earlier than it did, at what seemed to be a very appropriate point to me, but I can see that the filmmakers needed to give the main character’s stories a little more closure so as not to jar the unprepared audience too much, although perhaps this was at the expense of even greater realism and, as you will see, the overall effectiveness of the monster. The ending as it stands and the ending as it could have been both have good arguments for and against them, so this is not really a solid gripe to have with the film.
I cannot finish this review without mentioning producer J.J. Abrams, without whom this refreshing and absolutely essential film would never have come to be… and I can certainly say that I am more than looking forward to his franchise restarting film Star Trek, being released on boxing day, which he is both co-producing and directing… probably shooting even as I write! Much of the credit must go to him for giving Cloverfield such quality even on the relatively of minuscule budget of thirty million Dollars… which is for example ten times less than that of the recent film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which made less money on it’s opening weekend at the box office in the U.S. than this did; Cloverfield made back more than one and a half times it’s budget on it’s U.S. opening weekend alone!
There is plenty to stay for during the end credits, including the film's only musical score which is absolutely brilliant and will make you tingle. It serves as another nice and appropriate reminder of past science fiction B-pictures; not that Cloverfield is a B Picture, despite it's low budget. Beyond that though and more importantly there is something else to be heard right at the very end of the closing credits... and once you have heard it you'll need to look it up online to discover it's full meaning as I am not going to spoil it for you here! Now, a little warning if you are (as you should be...) planning on going to see this film: if you suffer from motion sickness, take something for it beforehand, and if you have epilepsy or perhaps even just a history of it, then you would probably be wise to give this film a miss… Flashing light effects and shaky, (more like wave all over the place-y…) camera work is the reason for that. It would be a shame though, because given the truly excellent nature of the film you would be really missing out on something very special.
Rating : *****
Written by,
.Peter.D.Marsay.
Originally completed: 03/02/08.
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