Synopsis
A group of young urbanites living in New York City has gathered to say goodbye to their friend, Rob (Michael Stahl-David) who is leaving for a job in Japan. On the night of his going away party, an enormous monster emerges from the Atlantic and attacks the city. While the creature rampages, Rob, his brother Jason (Mike Vogel), his brother's girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas), hanger on Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) and stereotypically annoying friend and cameraman Hud (T. J. Miller ) first try to escape New York. While attempting to cross the Brooklyn Bridge, the monster attacks, destroys the bridge, killing Jason and stranding the rest of the party in Manhattan. Rob receives a call from Beth (Odette Yustman) who is his friend, recent one-night stand and secret love of his life. We get to see snippets of the last date in tiny snippets throughout the film. Beth is trapped in her apartment. Rob resolves to rescue her and the rest of the gang come along because...why not? They have some close encounters with the main creature and are attacked while traveling in a subway tunnel by dog-sized parasites that are dropping off the monster, losing Lizzy Caplan to a disease the parasites carry which causing the victims to explode. Eventually they find Beth in her apartment, impaled by re-bar but still alive. Freeing her, they make it to an evacuation site. Lily leaves in one helicopter, while Rob, Hud and Beth board the last chopper out before the "Hammer Down Protocol" is initiated by the military. The chopper is swatted out of the sky by the monster, who proceeds to eat Hud (best part of the movie). Rob and Beth survive just long enough to record goodbye messages and profess their love for each other before the Air Force blasts lower Manhattan - and the monster - out of existence. The End.
Analysis
This movie starts with one strike against it; found footage. Readers of this site know I do not like found footage movies, in general. Why? Because it is often used as a lazy way to hide a low budget.
Not all found footage films are bad (I include mockumentaries in this genre). Anything - The War Game, Privilege, Punishment Park - by Peter Watkins is great. This is Spinal Tap is one of the funniest movies ever made, using the framework of a rockumentary to showcase its deadpan humor. Blair Witch is a tight, little horror movie, where the visual format heightens the tension. [Rec], [Rec2] and Apollo 18 show how the visual style of this genre can be used as an integral part of the story, enhancing the film. But, with the recent glut of found footage films, the bad movies greatly outweigh the good ones.
With Cloverfield it does not work. While the idea is sound, since the movie steadfastly refuses to focus on the action - we see very little of the monster - it would require a story and characters that we can become invested in. In this regard, the screenplay is a complete failure. Our protagonist is enamored with a women who is presented as a vapid, kind of whorish, woman-child. Three weeks after sleeping with Rob, she shows up at his party with a new boyfriend. That is not the mark of a friend and does not make for a character we want to see rescued. Of course, Rob is a shallow dolt as well, whose main traits are his product rich hair and slavish devotion to a woman who shows little interest in him. There is no particular motivation for any of the characters to follow him on his trip to save Beth other than the movie needed a camera operator (Hud) and some cannon fodder. Since you can't possibly care about one-dimensional, rather unlikable people - Hud's character in particular is so stupid and so annoying you wonder why anyone would befriend him - there is no reason to have any feelings about Rob succeeding or not.
Things might have been better if we had seen more of the monster. While the narrative device limits the number of believable panoramic "glamor" shots of the monster, it does not explain why the camera seems to be shy about focusing on the monster for more than a few seconds. And, why is almost everything either a dutch angle, shaky cam or a nauseating combination of both? In low-budget found footage movies, this conceit - that the camera operator behaves in a way that no real person would, focusing on anything but an effects heavy monster - is done in order to save money. With a budget of $25 million, Cloverfield did not suffer from a lack of funding. Even when the creature is in the scene, in a location where it would be in full view, Hud would rather film things like his friends reactions, rather than the enormous monster destroying the city. This starts out as an interesting artistic choice, but becomes increasingly annoying as the film wears on.
And, it does wear on. For a movie with a run-time of only 85 minutes (of which 11 minutes are closing credits) it drags. It has no interesting characters, a story that focuses on things I don't care about, a visual style that is frustrating in that it shows very little of what we want to see (a monster destroying New York city) and far too much of what we don't want to see (generically pretty people engaged in a quest that has no dramatic weight to it).
There are a good parts to the film. The effects team does a great job of animating the creature and a creating a convincing ground level view of the destruction being left in its wake. The monster has a pretty unique look to it, one that succeeds in creating a believably otherworldly menace. There are a few nice shots. A real stand out is a brief scene in which a B-2 bomber unloads a string of bombs on the creature. You get a good feel for how big the creature is and how devastating the fighting between the monster and the military as been in the city.
As far as the story, only knowing what the characters know - that on a seemingly normal day, the city they live in is attacked by a monstrous creature - works to keep our interest, at least to some degree. Trying to piece together what is happening, catching little hints of the larger story scattered here and there, is engaging. Having the little parasites dropping off the larger creature is a nice touch, both because it hints at a complex ecosystem and gives the characters something to fight. And the ending, with almost everyone dead, is satisfying, avoiding a cliched "our heroes make a last minute escape" finale.
Notes
Cloverfield had an intensive viral marketing campaign, with websites, hidden messages in trailers, videos you could piece together...a whole host of items that hinted at what the movie was going to be about, without giving too much away. Unfortunately, by the time the film was over, I had a feeling more effect was put into the marketing than into telling an interesting story.
Verdict
Cloverfield is a movie I wanted to like. I've given it a number of chances, hoping that in the right mood the film would finally appeal to me. Unfortunately, each time I watch it, I wind up thinking about the missed opportunity to actually achieve what Abrams set out to do; create a monster (and, a franchise) to rival Godzilla. Unfortunately, with the thin characters, dull story, lack of monster action and terrible use of the found footage tropes, the film fails to achieve much of anything. Since it is so short, seeing it once for the good elements is worth the investment of time.
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