Ramblog 002: On Cloverfield.

While on the drive home tonight talking to friends Adam, Curley, and Erich about the movie Cloverfield we had just seen-- and fighting the indigestion that followed from ten-dollar popcorn which contained equal parts popped corn, butter and salt-- I realized something. Cloverfield is a movie of such mixed sentiments from viewers and reviewers alike that it would be all too predictable of me to write a review/rant about it. But after further discussion and thoughts upon the movie, I decided that I had no other choice but to take the bait and write a somewhat lengthy response to this movie of questionable quality. I don't feel like ruining the movie for anyone who wants to see it, so I am going to give you a warning here and then move on. Warning: this review will contain extensive spoilers, personal opinions, lots of cursing, and even more criticism. If you are easily made nauseous by things like shaky camera or pseudo-controversial blogging, I suggest that you turn away now, or maybe after reading this spoiler-free summery.

Spoiler-Free Summary: Cloverfield is, simply put, a romp in mediocrity. Some things in the movie shone, some things...not so much. If you are going to this movie expecting quality acting or writing, watch something else. If you're a big disaster freak, a B-movie nut, or just want to see some really cool special effects, watch this movie. But for Zombie Jesus' sake, don't see this movie just because you saw the "01-18-08" trailer and were intrigued. You'll be sorely disappointed. It's also not scary at all and doesn't make a lot of sense. That's the rest of the review in a nutshell.

WARNING! THE SPOILER-FREE ZONE ENDS HERE!

So, getting down to brass tacks, Cloverfield starts out in a way that tries to be mysterious, but ends up just being convoluted, unintelligible, and random. This sets a good tone for the rest of the movie, because nothing is actually explained. Characters come and go as they please (they mostly go), and although it tries to be spooky, ominous, mysterious, and what-have-you; it's incredibly hard to do that when you've got a fifty-fucking-story-tall-dinosaur-slash-whale-slash-Sin-slash-mutant-thing running rampant in Midtown Manhattan. I mean, seriously, it'd be nice to have some explanation as to why this shit is happening. Cloverfield doesn't seem like the type of movie that would have a sequel, because (jumping forward a little bit), there's no real ending! Every character you are introduced to dies, save one girl whose fate is unknown (she probably died too, which is a shame because she was almost smart), and there is no epilogue saying where the fuck this monster came from, why it was in Manhattan, or who won against the monster.

Okay, scratch that, there's a cryptic backwards-radio-transmission if you wait for 10 minutes after the credits roll which, if you manage to record it and reverse it, might say "It's still alive", might say "Help us", and might say "Golly jeepers, I sure am in the mood for some blueberry fucking pancakes." Who gives a shit? If you're so into this movie that you care enough to analyze this sound clip, you have bigger issues than reading to the end of this ramblog. I advise you seek help immediately, or start over-analyzing something that requires or at least deserves it (I recommend House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski). There are three things about Cloverfield that I would even bother analyzing besides basic movie-reviewer shit such as plot, camera, acting, and effects. I will now list them here:

BEGIN LIST!

1) Sequel Possibility. Yes, there's some sort of sequel possibility; but from what I've seen, it would be totally unrealistic and not worth viewing. According to the good old Wikipedia entry for Cloverfield, the director said "There's a moment on the Brooklyn Bridge, and there was a guy filming something on the side of the bridge, and [the cameraman] Hud sees him filming and he turns over and he sees the ship that's been capsized and sees the headless Statue of Liberty, and then he turns back and this guy's briefly filming him. In my mind that was two movies intersecting for a brief moment, and I thought there was something interesting in the idea that this incident happened and there are so many different points of view, and there are several different movies at least happening that evening and we just saw one piece of another."

To that, I respectfully say to director Matt Reeves, why the fuck would you make two movies that are the exact same thing?! I understand where he would be coming from in making a sequel, but I also understand that sequels generally involve the same characters (or similar characters) with an entirely different plot. What he would be doing here would be using the exact same plot with different characters! It'd be like an expansion pack for a video game, and I really hope that it wouldn't sell unless the plot was drastically changed. But I can't see how it would be changed, either. I mean, in the middle of the night, this monster randomly appears in the city, destroys shit, has a bunch of parasites that make people explode, and then the military overreacts and bombs the shit out of it and New York City. Something tells me that if a sequel is made in that manner, those plot points wouldn't be changed. So you've got the same movie, but with a different script. Why would anyone see that?

2) Product Placement- I understand that this movie was supposed to be drastically realistic, but I wasn't even paying attention to it and I saw a ridiculous amount of labels around New York City. True, NYC does have a ridiculous amount of advertising, but without even really looking for anything, they managed to sneak in Sony, Spongebob Squarepants, Nokia (multiple times), Aquafina/PepsiCo, and many others (as I said, that was off the top of my head at 11 at night). Also, during the party, they played songs by Spoon, Bright Eyes, Of Montreal, and Ratatat just to name a few. I'm not complaining about this, mind you, I'm just noting that when an average guy like me goes to a movie and notices this right off the bat, it's saying something. Not sure what it's saying--and I'm not going to go into it because this is a movie review and not a shitty philosophical discussion of society-- but it's saying something.

3) Critically-Proclaimed Originality- I'm not going to knock this movie for being unoriginal, mainly because everything is tried-and-true (or at least tried) these days and finding real originality is like me finding the G-Spot on an attractive female: it just doesn't happen often. But enough about me. Cloverfield has been lauded on multiple occasions for an original plot, cast of characters, style of filming, special effects and what-have-you. To this I simply ask the proclaimers of such statements: What is your address? Because I bet it is Nobody-Gives-A-Shit, Under A Rock Road, Nowhere, Idaho. The shitty homemade filming technique is most certainly not new to Cloverfield (Blair Witch Project, anybody?), nor is the plot: a ridiculous hybrid of Godzilla (the obvious) and Escape from New York (the not-so-obvious). I will agree that the film has an original cast of characters for a thriller/horror/disaster/nobody-gives-a-fuck movie, but as I'm about to explain, this is far from a good thing.

END LIST!

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'll actually talk about the movie. As I said, it starts out in a faux-mysterious way, and then cuts to some guy (who we find out to be the main character, the lovestruck, post-angsty Robert) filming some girl (who we later see is Beth, Rob's best friend/one night stand whore) after a night of what was most certainly unbridled pleasure, because who doesn't like celebrating fucking your best friend by going to Coney Island the next day? But oh no, what's this? It appears that the tape is tainted, as there is a decidedly unclean cut and the time-stamp reads one month later. We then see that Robert's brother Jason (who nobody cares about and dies in the first half hour) 'stole' the camera from his "bro" (yes, it is that type of movie) to film a going away party. Of course, this going away party is riddled with drama, as Robert becomes mopey about the fact that Beth actually went out and got a boyfriend because he was too much of an uncertain cunt to do anything with her other than sleep with her and be distant. The night progresses, shit happens that nobody cares about, and the characters get increasingly drunker.

It is here, ten minutes into the movie, where I began to notice the intolerable acting of the characters. Even if they are drunk, everybody is completely detached from one another and it doesn't feel like any bonds are being established, reinforced, or broken-- save the bond every character reinforces with good old Jack Daniel. This, of course, is an overextravagant gesture from the director, or the caster, or the producer, or somebody. It's actually a large subliminal message, saying "Hey, don't give a shit about these people! They're practically retarded, what they do is unimportant, and they all should have seen their imminent death coming!" Or at least, that's the point that I hope somebody was trying to get across, because the script and acting are far from gems.

I noticed this again after the monster appeared in Manhattan, when the main characters run to the roof to "get a better look". No doubt these are the same people who would go into the basement alone and without a flashlight or weapon to investigate the noise during a zombie outbreak while wearing red and saying "I'll be right back". After their foray to the roof, they sober up in less than five minutes as they run out into the streets to get an even better view of the chaos going on. Then, they go from being not-very-well-portrayed-"smashed" (Robert alone had at least three shots of sake and two beers) to sober, rational and coherent faster than my car goes from 0 to 60, but I guess their superhuman surges of tolerance make up for their ability to form decent escape plans. Plan 1--go with the flow--isn't necessarily a bad one, but when that goes awry, Robert realizes that he loves Beth and has to go back for her in the middle of war-zone NYC. Not only does he have to do this, but he has to travel in the dark subways without a weapon or light, trust the military to help him in his crisis, and climb a 50-story apartment building to reach Beth's apartment building, which has collapsed onto this other building. The characters are original for the setting, but they are also far from inspired, deep, or even vaguely intelligent (and I'm not even mentioning the part where they decide to pull Beth off a spike that is impaled through the left side of her chest, but then she starts running around and generally surviving until the last scene).

The plot is also predictable, so I'm just going to skip over that and spoil as little of what there is to spoil as possible and discuss what I really want to: the Cloverfield monster. This monster appears (although I'm told it could be an object making a mysterious splash in the ocean during the Coney Island section of the tape...not that I care) in New York City, wreaking havoc on everything it sees and dropping off small pieces of itself that later on become deer-sized spider-like parasites intent on biting people. Oh yeah, and when you get bitten by a parasite and live, you explode. I guess what I'm trying to open this portion with is the movie and the monster generally make absolutely no sense so don't even bother trying to rationalize them.

But wait! Giant monster that looks like a whale mixed with a dinosaur that inexplicably destroys cities and has parasites attached to it that drop off and kill things whenever it wants them to? This sounds all too familiar, at which point I will direct you to the main villain of Final Fantasy 10, Sin (An explanation can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_Final_Fantasy_X_and_X-2#Sin and a picture here: http://www.ffcompendium.com/chara/10sin2.jpg). The Cloverfield monster, while doesn't look exactly like this, has almost the same premise, except it looks a little bit more like a T-Rex and doesn't teleport a brickheaded, flamboyant, Japanese male and all of his friends 10,000 years into the future. So much for that little bit of originality.

Also, it has come to my attention through this interview (http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=41100) that there was a general premise to the monster. Director Reeves said that "The key to it is that the monster was a baby. The monster was suffering from separation anxiety and was absolutely disoriented and pissed, "where's mommy?", and terrified. That was the most important aspect of the creature. Not only was he furious and in a rage but he was scared, because to me there's nothing scarier than something huge that's spooked."

Oh, wow. Thanks, Mr. Reeves. While you're at it, why don't you give us a guide to the movie, y'know, like a Cloverfield for Dummies reference, so we can understand what's going on? Because I hate to admit it, but that actually makes sense!

Or maybe you could have stopped trying to be mysterious and maybe even hinted a little bit at what the fuck was going on even 1% of the time, making that revelatory interview an "Oh, duh, I got that." instead of a "Where the hell did that come into play?!" In fact, I take back what I said in the last paragraph. I want this option instead.

Now that I've gotten the lengthy negatives out, I'd like to dwell on the positives of the movie: the special effects. While the camera made me want to vomit quite a few times, the special effects were probably some of the best I've ever seen in a movie, and definitely the best from a thriller/disaster movie. That monster looked all too real, as did the havoc it wreaked on Manhattan. I have to say that although I was disappointed by most of the movie, the effects and rendering of the monster were amazing and near unbelievable.

However, beauty does not overcome the beast, and sitting through uninspired acting, a predictable plot, and nonsensical madness that didn't even add up in the end does not get canceled out by the fact that I easily believed the monster could be real. If you haven't noticed yet, it's really hard for me to stop talking about the written aspects of this film. It's a problem that really bothered me while viewing: in terms of plot/character development, screenwriting, and acting, Cloverfield fell flat on its face and lay there writhing for ninety minutes. And all I can say to that is thank God it was only an hour and a half, because if I had to sit through ten more minutes of high-pitched "Oh my God, I'm so scared, we're all going to die!" screaming, I would have gouged out my ears in order to save my sanity. So if you don't care about the shitty aesthetics (although there are a few cynical moments such as Hub's comments about flaming hobos and people taking pictures of the Statue of Liberty's head while the monster is a few blocks up the street which made me snicker and think the movie was being "smart" for a change) and just want to see a pissed-off whaleasaur destroy buildings and make people explode for no good reason whatsoever, go see Cloverfield. But I warn you, get to the movie theater 25 minutes late so you can see the first explosion and skip out on the party. I mean, you don't want it to make too much sense, do you?

-blake.