CLOVERFIELD (Matt Reeves, 2008) ***

Rating: 7/10 (14 April 2008)

To begin with, I found this to be somewhat better than I had anticipated (though, admittedly, advance reviews had been generally positive). That said, the opening fifteen minutes are quite deadly - (even if the extended party footage helps to flesh out characters and, thus, heighten the later relentless anxiety passages). Thankfully, the teen relationships stuff gets forgotten pretty quickly  but, when they occur, the elegiac intermittent video footage of the happier past gives one a much-needed breather.
This is THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) meets THE HOST (2006) or, if you, like a Hollywood monster movie of yore updated for the MTV generation and filtered through with a post-9/11 sensibility. SCREAM (1996), THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT itself and SAW (2004) are all recent examples of the next big thing in Horror films; and, yet, who today recalls (or even misses) the film-makers of BLAIR WITCH? The director of this one, Matt Reeves, is already 42  and his previous film had been the comedy THE PALLBEARER (1996); in any case, CLOVERFIELD is more renowned for being a J.J. Abrams project (who produced it).
The film is compact (even with its tight 75 minutes duration, barring the typically lengthy closing credits, it stills sags slightly and interest starts to wane towards the end), the title obscure, the monster(s) undefined (the shapeless main creature is creepy and admirably one only gets to have a real good look at it when gobbling up the Hud character! The young cast is variable, anonymous (with the most interesting characters being the misfits  Helena for being a Latina and Hud a geek) and, fashionably, indiscriminately disposed of. As for the cine'-verite' approach, the film-makers' over-reliance on it becomes rather self-defeating: would it be plausible for someone to keep filming this stuff? Besides, while aiding in the immediacy of the destruction and the ensuing panic (with such effective shock sequences as the demolition of the Brooklyn bridge, the tunnel attack and Helena's mysteriously violent and messy death), it never allows the audience a moment for reflection  coming across as a sensation rather than an experience and, given that nothing at all is explained, one isn't any the wiser by the end of it!
In retrospect, it seems obvious that the traumatic 9/11 events has transported the U.S. back to the days of political/nuclear/alien paranoia which, back then, was also transmitted into cinematic terms via any number of sci-fi parables but where it's evident that the film-makers of that time were utmost professionals (in their strict majority) whose mission was to provide thought-provoking entertainment rather than merely computer-generated publicity stunts. At least, it does manage a couple of lingering images: the disembodied head of the Statue Of Liberty tumbling to the ground and an empty horse-carriage eerily wandering by night on a practically deserted city street. Sadly enough, but hardly surprising, a sequel is already in the works; the film, then, is no masterpiece but very well done nonetheless: smart, exciting and highly effective  in essence, what the much-hyped Hollywood remake of GODZILLA (1998) should have been in the first place! In spite of my reservations, I still consider it to be the first must-see movie of 2008 (which I chose not to watch it in the theater for fear of the dizzy camera syndrome proving to be a bit much but, actually, one gets used to it pretty quickly).