America's Godzilla

Rating: 5/10 (17 April 2020)

Although Hollywood has remade "Godzilla" a few times, it never made much sense as an American monster movie. That's because the original "Gojira" was an allegory for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Cloverfield" is a similar cinematic processing in the kaiju tradition of national tragedy, that of 9/11. Others have done likewise with sci-fi adaptation ("War of the Worlds" (2005), superhero fare ("The Avengers" (2012), Man of Steel" (2013)) and still others merely add robots to combat the kaiju ("Pacific Rim" (2013)), or make the kaiju robotic ("Transformers"). In other words, there's been a lot of movies translating the attacks to an invasion from outer-space aliens--one world fighting another and usually turned into a cinematic universe or, otherwise, a franchise. "Avatar" (2009) even reverses the trajectory by having Americans as the invaders of an alien planet. Anyways, "Cloverfield" appropriately enough includes, reportedly, blinking footage from early American monster movies "King Kong" (1933), "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (1953) and "Them!" (1954) (although the Statue of Liberty head, referencing "Escape from New York" (1981), is better done).
The gimmick added on this in "Cloverfield," besides the much remarked upon paratextual marketing schemes of the franchise, is the pretending found footage--a technique popularized in horror movies by "The Blair Witch Project" (1999) and preceded by "Cannibal Holocaust" (1980). Theoretically, this offers the simplicity of the spectator's gaze, already associated with or directed by that of the camera, to be directly associated with a character or multiple ones--something that classically is done more loosely by a series of looks (e.g. shot of protagonist looking at something or someone being followed by a direct cut to a shot of what they're looking at). Unfortunately, the main character as camera here is portrayed by T.J. Miller. On the other hand, the handheld camerawork putting us in the point-of-view of the character also distances us from him to the extent that he's largely removed from the footage. That the footage is supposedly found further removes them. In a sense, they're already dead even if the characters didn't turn out that way by movie's end.
Besides the tediousness, if not downright offensiveness, of making cinematic spectacle out of 9/11--an act of terrorism that was already remarkable, for among other obvious reasons, as a televised spectacle--"Cloverfield" also offers a hackneyed and simplistic setup, of a surprise party and unrequited love--this time, abruptly interrupted by immersive alien invasion pandemonium. Miller's idiot doesn't even provide effective comedic relief, and the other characters are wooden. "10 Cloverfield Lane" (2016) is better simply because it has compelling characterizations, and its black humor rather works.
Others have also commented on the obscuring of the view of the aliens, as aided by the found-footage style--as a character more afraid for their life and running away rather than trying to capture the best camera angles, but we get pretty good and increasingly better looks at the monster and monsters and their destruction before that final facial close-up. It's hardly Lovecraftian, and if anything the camerawork is suspiciously too good to pull off the effect. One of many alien-invasion 9/11 movie metaphors and another horror flick to employ the found-footage technique is not a philosophically cosmic exploration of the unknown, either. Regardless, the technique does echo how much of 9/11 was actually recorded and presented on TV, and it's interesting to track how tragic national events, from WWII and before through the War on Terror have been represented figuratively in cinema. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a slew of pandemic parables on screen in the years to come. "10 Cloverfield Lane" already resonates more today with much of the world under shelter-in-place orders. This is the second time I've seen the original "Cloverfield," as well, but it hasn't improved as such with age; if anything, what may have been seen by some as novel in 2008 isn't very impressive with hindsight.