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| Tookey's Review |
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| Cast |
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| Released: |
2008 |
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| Genre: |
MONSTER
HORROR
SCIENCE FICTION
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
85 |
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Cloverfield sounds reassuringly pastoral, but turns out to be nerve-janglingly urban. Set in Manhattan, it is about a going-away party that goes awry. Rob (Michael Stahl-David) is an unappealing yuppie about to take up a lucrative post in Japan. His celebration with friends comes to an abrupt end when there’s an earthquake, accompanied by what look like fireballs. As the party spills on to the streets, the terrors begin.
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Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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The trouble with most big, special effects movies is that they don’t feel real. It’s easy to sit back and admire the skill that went into Jurassic Park or the recent Hollywood Godzilla, without truly suspending our disbelief or feeling intimately involved.
Modern monster movies also have to contend with the very real horror that most of us felt witnessing the events of 9/11. They were most frightening when it wasn’t clear yet who was attacking the west, or why.
Cloverfield is a clever – some would say, cynical - attempt by producer J.J. Abrams (Lost), director Matt Reeves and writer Drew Goddard to evoke memories of 9/11 in a way that’s thrilling but safe. Their film has become a number one box office hit in the States, and I think it will do the same here.
It conforms to the template of many other horror films by having a number of physically attractive but poorly delineated young people killed off, in no particular order. And it pinches the idea from The Blair Witch Project of having all the events shot from the point-of-view of a video camera. The unsteady results may at times engender motion sickness, but it does make the arrival of monsters to trash Manhattan and savage the cast all the more authentic.
The film has faults. The initial setting-up of the characters takes too long, and they aren’t very interesting. The dialogue is banal, bordering on braindead, and I lost count of how many times someone screamed “O my Gahd!” or “We’ve gotta get outa here, man!”
Still, people probably aren’t at their most articulate when running for their lives or trying to avoid being crushed by a giant foot. And the movie really does sound and look like actuality footage.
Not all the behaviour is plausible. On several occasions I found myself wondering why the friends were going to rescue someone who might already be dead. I was equally unsure why the heroine didn’t jettison her high heels when attempting to climb a 57-floor building. And I couldn’t help but admire the battery life of that video camera.
Cloverfield never discloses where the monster is from, or the nature of its grievance. Maybe it’s an enraged investor in Wall Street shares. Still, it does create some spectacular damage, including the destruction of the Brooklyn bridge and the decapitation of the Statue of Liberty.
The film lacks the polish, characterisation and narrative neatness of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, but it does convey a convincing atmosphere of panic and helplessness. It’s a creature feature for our times: Youtube-zilla.
Incidentally, don’t be baffled by the title Cloverfield. It has no relevance to anything in the movie: it’s the name of the Santa Monica boulevard where the production had its offices.
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