Cloverfield
Friday, 01 Feb 2008 10:54
The Big Apple's under attack in the exhilarating Cloverfield.
Directed by Matt Reeves, out in cinemas 1st February, starring Michael Stahl-David, TJ Miller and Lizzy Caplan, running time 85 minutes.
In a nutshell...
Party-goers film monster destroying Manhattan.
What's it all about?
Cloverfield begins pleasantly enough, with Rob filming his day out with love-of-his-life and childhood friend Beth. Cutting to a month later, the tape shows a leaving party for Rob as he prepares to move to Japan. Rob's best friend Hud films the party sporadically, and the events that unfold.
When the city is rocked by a massive explosion and Rob receives a panicked phone call from Beth, he feels the need to cross the shattered city to rescue her with his friends and video camera following.
Who's in it?
In order to achieve its feeling of authenticity, Cloverfield is full of a cast of unknowns. Stahl-David stars as main character Rob who needs to find and rescue Beth (Odette Yustman).
His friends Lily (Jessica Lucas), Marlena (Caplan) and Hud (TJ Miller) accompany him and the film glows with their humanity. The entire cast feel and act so completely normal it is as if this is a mere window into their lives.
Hud receives a special mention as the unerring cameraman documenting the journey through a devastated Manhattan, adding lifting black humour throughout the film.
As an example...
Rob: Still filming?
Hud: Yeah, people are gonna want to know... how it all went down.
Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars
As a monster movie, it is unlikely that Cloverfield will be nominated, no matter how much it breaks boundaries and shatters expectations.
Critics are reacting to Cloverfield with excitement, although cynics of the genre will always have permanently raised eyebrows.
What the others say
"The constant air of panic is so pervasive that it's easy to miss the skilful creation of the sequences, which include a rescue from a collapsing skyscraper and a tunnel sequence so butt-clenching you'll crap diamonds for a week." - Empire
"Moans about sketchy characters and dodgy dialogue are irrelevant. These aren't disaster-movie templates - good guy, fat guy, hysterical girl, selfish guy who deserves to die. They're you, me, everyman/woman." – Total Film
So is it any good?
Following such extensive media hype, Cloverfield could've easily limped quietly away with a whimper. Thankfully, this monster movie has more than enough bite to fulfil the promise and excitement of the widespread viral campaign.
Opening with a brief tantalising military description as being discovered "in the area once known as Central Park", Cloverfield never feels anything less than convincingly real. The hand-held camera has of course been done previously with The Blair Witch Project but, used in this context, cinema has rarely felt more visceral or involving.
This is partly due to the fact that major news stories of modern disasters are no longer built upon flashy or smooth camerawork, but on the grainy and shaky footage shot from bystanders with mobile phones. Recordings of 9/11 are purposefully brought to mind by Cloverfield, past reality slapping us in the face.
Scenes of people running screaming through Manhattan, choking dust and fluttering paper filling the air, skyscrapers collapsing as if constructed of glass, it all looks and feels so unsettlingly real because it has been real.
The acting and characterisation greatly adds to the realistic atmosphere. Cynics may deride the tiny amount of back story, the vaguely stereotypical characters and simple plotline, but the acting feels so natural and convincing that you feel you know them. And of course you do – these survivors are not Arnie or Bruce, they're just perfectly ordinary people.
One of the most effective aspects of this movie is the special effects. Even though shot by a hand-held camera, the large-scale military action and set pieces such as a bridge collapsing transfer to the screen better than expected, a real credit to director Matt Reeves. It appears so genuinely real that New York is being ravaged by a monster that the audience never even questions the fire fights or the massive destruction.
Used to tremendous effect by Reeves, the camcorder occasionally flashes back to joyful scenes filmed previously on the tape, reminding the viewer of normality and how Manhattan looked before the attack before yanking us back into the dark and the panic.
Surprisingly however, Cloverfield is funny. Dark humour litters the dialogue, with Hud the cameraman taking the credit for the movie's most amusing lines ("Okay, so our choices are we die in here, die in the subway, or die on the streets").
As with many horror and monster movies, technology is shown to be ultimately pointless and self-destructive. The might of the US military is, of course, useless against a monster which seems to laugh at napalm. Strobe-like flashes surround the head of the Statue of Liberty lying battered in the street as people utilise their camera phones. The demise of a mobile phone battery is seen as a distressing loss.
Cloverfield lays on the tension thickly, a scene exploring the deserted NYC subway lines being particularly nail-biting. Unfortunately, however, it falls down on the horror front. Some of the devices feel ever so slightly clunky, eliciting expectation rather than downright terror. The monster is wonderfully unexplained and a fantastically unique design, but eventually witnessing the entire majesty of it inevitably diminishes the horror.
Cloverfield is tense, inventive, engaging - and like nothing else you'll see this year.
9/10
Melanie Green
"I was given the Cloverfield dvd for my birthday and I am going to send it back as an unwanted present, as it appears the movie is made on a tight budget because it is filmed by an actor with a webcam on his head. Making the screen appear like a rolling sea. Anyone seeing this movie should take seasick pills." - David Host
"FYI - As I think Mel explains very well in her review, the filming style is deliberate - they used a digital video camera as it's intended to feel as if you are alongside the characters and are as confused as they are about the nature of the disaster. It's also the exact length of a digital video tape, by the way. Just as with The Blair Witch Project, the cinematography is entirely on purpose and especially with Cloverfield, budget is not an issue; JJ Abrams makes Lost, for heaven's sake!" - Lewis, Entertainment Editor
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