A Joyride with a Few Kinks in the Track

Rating: 6/10 (15 July 2009)

More than anything, this film at least proves that showmanship is still alive. The major drawback is that it shows Abrams up to be little more than a modern William Castle, in that, in the light of the viral marketing campaign that preceded the film's release, there is a definite sense of "design the poster first, make the movie second". Case in point; with the promotion of Lost, he placed heavy emphasis on the fact that the plot and structure had been carefully mapped out beforehand, with a pile of seemingly random events leading up to a solution that would ultimately make sense. It later emerged that network executives had to pressure the production company into actually retrofitting a structure to it, since there never was one to begin with. In this case, Cloverfield was promoted with a massive viral marketing campaign where dark hints and bizarre clues provided by various websites connected with the movie suggested something far deeper than the film actually delivers. Fans across the internet were filled with wild speculation and they proposed ideas far more interesting than those contained in the finished product. One is ultimately left with the sense that the film makers were fishing for ideas whilst making the film up as they went along. There was anticipation that Godzilla, something out of Lovecraft and a whole menagerie of mythical, biblical and literary entities would be responsible for the devastation of New York. The Slusho website in particular gave fruit to ideas not contained in the finished product and the viewer can't help but feel slightly let down. Having levelled this criticism, one should probably leave all that in the past and review the film on its own. While using the already tired victim-of-disaster-with-a-camcorder technique that went out of fashion ten minutes into the Blair Witch project, the film actually gets away with it for the most part by emulating the Naudet brother's footage from 9/11. This does however get a little daft at times, since one does get the impression that an ordinary citizen wouldn't keep the camera rolling the whole time. This this a especially true during the rather hazardous scene where the main characters are crossing over from the roof of one high-rise building to another that is in a state of partial collapse. However, it works splendidly during many of the action sequences (particularly during a running street battle between the monster and army and a creepy scene in an abandoned subway tunnel) and also allows for the use of a truly unique cinematic gimmick, whereby we are given flashes of the footage originally on the tape being used to capture the attack. Although these brief glimpses feature nothing more than what appears to a trip to Coney Island, they ultimately pay off by giving us clear evidence of the origin of the invader and allow for an ironic twist, in that the victims of the attack had the answers in their hands all the time, but never noticed. Although the film does give you a decent knocking about for two hours and feels like a real roller coaster ride, the human action is vaguely stilted. If we are supposed to care about these characters, there is not much evidence for it. The reason for this is that early attempts at character development during the opening going-away party are so obvious as to be flawed. Also, since a title card establishes that fact that the footage was found in the area where central park used to be, it's pretty obvious from the beginning that our heroes aren't going to make it out alive so one has a natural propensity for keeping them at an (emotional) arm's length. But this is a monster movie so we're not really concerned with the humans, are we? So does the film deliver on its main protagonist? Well, yes and no. On the plus side, early glimpses are too weird and obscure to give us too much information but odd enough to be scary. The downside is that after craning our heads, squinting our eyes and wondering, "is that a squid? Was that a foot or a head? Could it be a giant vole... etc." the movie breaks the cardinal rule and shows its Thing full on and in the cold light of day and by God, is it disappointing. It's not the creature design itself (even though it mixes so much contrasting biology as to not really work visually) but the fact that our imaginations were doing so much better when we just caught the odd glimpse. Seen full on, it's far to anthropomorphic to excite chills. It's got two arms, two legs and a tail. Worst still it has eyes, nose and mouth. In other words, its disappointingly recognisable and nowhere near as weird as it should be. I might got so far as to say that it looks a bit silly. I REALLY wanted something big and lumbering and aquatic. What we get is an anorexic man with polio wearing a bat-mask rendered in so-so CGI. This is one of those times when speculative internet fan art is infinitely better than the real thing. So, is Cloverfield any good? Well, actually, yes. Ish. There are some fantastic ideas on display (the parasites the monster carries are far worse than the big guy himself; people keep stopping to take pictures of the latest round of devastation with their iPhones) and there's a lovely, almost cheeky touch where the overture over the end credits pays blatant homage to the Japanese monster movie scores of Akira Ifukube (particularly the Godzilla theme) and one does feel that our heroes have a valid emotional reason for staying in the city while all hell is breaking loose but for all the hype, one feels that it could have been so much more. Basically, it's well worth seeing for the ride but it is a one trick pony and you won't need to see it twice.