Near brilliant

Rating: 8/10 (18 January 2008)

Man, what a rush! "Cloverfield" is, in short, a wild ride.
I'm not going to go into the story at all because there isn't much more to the story than everyone knows. It's not that kind of a movie.
What it is, however, is near brilliant. Not everything works (almost everything does though), but all in all, it's well worth the admission price.
The decision to make it using a hand held camera was genius. It really puts you into the middle of the chaos, and makes the need for richly-developed characters not needed. Plus it intensifies everything by about 100 times. Some will complain that this makes the film have a dizzying effect, but except in a few spots, that's not really an issue.
The best part of the movie is the dialogue and the acting. For the most part, particularly in the beginning, the film feels almost unscripted. The people say things and talk almost exactly like real people do, and the actors supplement that quality by acting like real people, and not like movie characters. Again, this heightens the movie's immediacy and realism, and avoids making this movie having an intelligence level of zero.
In any review of this movie, there is going to be some mention of 9/11. This is as unavoidable as it is necessary to discuss. In a few spots, it brings back unsettling memories of that tragedy. I can't fault the filmmakers for this because since the event was so traumatic, it was probably unavoidable. Or maybe it was intentional. If so, it works.
This is a summer action movie without a doubt. Why the producers decided to release this in January is quite obvious. This time of year is a bridge between Oscar-movies and movies that would cost less to flop than to shelve. Since this is a radically new approach (one that has never been tried with a big-budget action movie-at least for the whole film), the producers probably didn't want their whole summer resting on the shoulders of something they weren't confident would work. Releasing "Cloverfield" at this time would cover two bases: if it was a huge, unexpected success, it could be up for some Oscars (as it looks now, that is highly unlikely except for the awards that typically go to action movies, since the Golden Globes are typically good indicators of the Oscar nominees). However, if the movie flopped, it would disappear along with the rest of the post-Oscar trash without so much as a blip on the radar screen.
I really hope this movie does well. Given how stingy mainstream movie producers are with new ideas, they probably won't try this approach unless it makes big (and I mean BIG) bucks. That would be a shame, because when used appropriately, the use of a hand-held camera can be very effective. However, it is a little early for the post-Oscar garbage (that usually comes in February), so there is a definite threat that it might get lost in the Oscar racing movies. Should this happen, mainstream movie producers would probably assume that this movie was rotten as a whole, thus ending the careers of the approach as well as the actors (which would be horrible, since all are great, especially Michael Stahl-David, who is excellent). Only time will tell what the future holds for this kind of movie.