a contradiction that works, up to a point: big Hollywood blockbuster/monster movie meets (stylized) subjective POV

Rating: 7/10 (26 January 2008)

JJ Abrams is very clever at delivering projects that drive up the hype machine like some kind of crazy storm, which can either go off smashingly (Lost) or not so much (Felicity). Cloverfield is an experiment that needed some clever marketing - hence the "what the ?" trailer that came out last summer with people partying in a video camera viewpoint, and then looking out at a big explosion over New York City. What the film is is a bit different from the mystery surrounding the buzz on it, though the director Matt Reeves and writer Drew Goddard (the former's first movie since The Pallbearer, the latter his first feature script after years of television), end up delivering some clever ideas and some good scares, even surprisingly juicy metaphors, while also making the audience suspend an incredible amount of disbelief.
And it's this amount of disbelief that had me personally feeling very mixed about the picture when it ended. I knew I had seen some good entertainment in the sense of delivering the shocks and thrills that a good monster movie can provide (some of it, arguably, reminds one of the recent film the Mist). But there's more than just the ambiguity around where the huge would-kick-Godzilla's-toosh monster that reigns havoc all over midtown Manhattan, though that's a part of it. There's a specific purpose in having the characters Reeves and Goddard have in the picture, who are shallow, self-obsessed twenty-something cretins that look like a cross between your suburban Abercrombie acquaintances and rejects from MTV reality shows. The filmmakers bring the audience early on- and in increases steadily as the story goes on- to despising these people, not simply for their actions (have any of these people heard of the phrase "every man for himself and huge f***ing creature against all?"), but for doing the stupid things that happen in most horror films.
And yet, at the same time, the filmmakers have something special going on here, aside from the technique, which is of course part of the message (medium-message yada yada). The monster and its minions, for these kids as well as everyone else in the city, is like what philosophers call "the big other". Look at the scene where looters rush into an electronics store, and on TV there's news footage of the monster ripping apart the city. All the looters stop dead in their tracks, and for Rob and Lily and especially Hud the creature is like some unfathomable presence that can't be stopped, and despite being right where they can see it is something they can't totally grasp their collective consciousness around. That, plus some (slightly obvious) allusions to 9/11, and a slight tip of the hat to Japan (the kid going off to Japan, almost clever by half I'd say), make this a movie that does have some good metaphors going for it under the surface.
This being said, there's something about the aforementioned characters that sort of bugged me, startling early on with the twenty minute lot of scenes with the party, and trickling down as the film went along. The style is meant to convey something specific, that we're right along with the viewer as they go through an extremely chaotic situation that is inconceivable (at least, unless, you haven't seen your share of Godzilla movies). Which, in its own way, treks back to the legacy left by Blair Witch Project, where one cared about what would happen to the trio as their defenses whittled down to a nub in the midst of the dark woods. In the case of Cloverfield, however, we're put in a situation where the subjective point of view is intense, a way of revealing a creature that is designed like out of some weird graphic novel. This part, of revealing the horror elements, works fine and effectively (particularly the spiders in the subway)...
And at the same time the characters don't quite follow the reality that would be for most people. It's good to see a movie like Cloverfield with an audience (especially, if you're lucky, in Manhattan itself) to see the kind of response it gets, which to me seemed like a collective form of stretching the suspension of disbelief. Aside from the character Marlena, who is arguably the most sympathetic (or just least "what the ?" of the characters in what they do or say or act), they're like most characters we see in many a horror movie, following a logic that is more based on getting through the points that will lead the story through its harrowing end. I'll be able to suspend disbelief even in the sorts of things one has to go with in Cloverfield. But it takes some identification, some sympathy with the characters, to make it really worthwhile. I didn't get that from the picture, adding to it a muddled (if slightly exciting) climax.
In the end, Cloverfield left me with mixed feelings, and I'm not sure when I would watch it again. But as the biggest hit so far in 2008, it's hard not to want to see what it has to offer, as a tip of the hat to old classic monster-destroys-city movie while trying a different approach. Least I can say is Abrams fans wont be too dissatisfied.