Cloverfield

Sometimes the idea of a movie can transform the experience of watching it, and sometimes only on remembering it. The challenge is to have ideas that are not only clever and appear so, but which actually make good, effective films that matter.

I went into this thinking that it would be an evolution of "Transformers." That film worked for me, and worked in ways that were beyond anything I had seen. Sure the story was dumb and the very idea of the robots was childish. But the way the film was put together was a bit astonishing. In old movies, if there was a monster destroying a building, well then you saw the building being destroyed as if you were a placid god in the sky somewhere. With Transformers, you never really saw things this way. You saw them as if you were an observer threatened by and involved in the action. You were running, avoiding, occasionally glancing and sometimes accidentally seeing part of what was happening.

It was new, marvelous. But we always knew the cameras were not associated with humans, at least not the ones on screen. The idea was to trick us into adopting the disembodied cameras we always accepted and allowed us, the audience to be threatened, to be there.

Now this. Some of the effects are the same. At least in the beginning of the disaster, we only partially see what is happening. And there are many times when the camera is unsteady. But I got the impression that although the camera was handled by a panicked character, we always saw more than he would have. The camera was always where we would have wanted it, arranged to increase the dramatic effect.

Transformers was silly and we could assault it. Cloverfield was supposedly real and it assaulted us. That makes the deliberation of camera a whole different thing. Its control is external to what's happening. We do realize this without thinking about it, and it diffuses the terror and changes it to spectacle. This folding technique only works when you have the commitment of the audience. They thought they would get it with the teen soap opera at the beginning. Didn't work for me.

It would have worked better if she hadn't ASKED to be rescued.

Nice bridge though.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Some people have derisively compared this film to The Blair Witch Project because it was all told from the point of view of someone's shaking camera. Unless you have motion sickness, I don't think that's a bad thing. What matters is who's in front of the camera. While The Blair Witch Project featured annoying people screaming at each other, this movie actually made me care about the characters. In fact if it had continued with the romantic drama tone established during the first half hour, I STILL think it would have been worth watching and that's the biggest compliment I can give it.

Of course people will be watching this movie for the visceral pleasure and Colverfield delivers. Many thrilling visual and sound effects wowed me (there were a few times I yelled out in shock at a sudden scare). Any horror film will also benefit from a sense of entrapment and this movie pulls off the seemingly impossible feat of making New York City seem claustrophobic because there was seemingly nowhere to hide from the monster.

What is the monster? Whatever it is clearly is meant to be an allegory for the carnage 9/11 inflicted on New York, much the same way Godzilla was meant to be an allegory for the damage inflicted on Japan by the atom bomb. There are moments seemingly recreating the documentary footage from 9/11, and they give the film verisimilitude. Touching upon real life horror, plus creating characters that we can relate to and care about, and assaulting our senses with incredible sights and sounds leads to entertainment worth watching many times over. Perhaps the 80 minute run time will bother some people, but on the other hand I think that's better than a film wearing out its welcome. Great job J.J. Abrams and company!

So, I went to a 5PM showing of Cloverfield today. It was pretty good. I found the characters to be very human and developed quite nicely over the course of the story. The special effects were excellent, with quite a few "oh $#!@" moments.

Be warned: If Blair Witch Project made you nauseous, then I don't recommend Cloverfield. The *entire* movie is filmed in the "handy-cam" style of the trailer - but in my opinion, it works better here than in Blair Witch. It helped draw you into the movie and make you feel like you were in it, and it made the CGI more convincing.

Very intense film.

I agree with most of the comments I read, in that this film is definitely worth watching, BUT thought I'd mention a few things that others didn't.

The lack of a steady camera shot, even though it fits well with the plot, began to wear on me. I found myself relieved whenever the camera fell to the ground and gave the same view for a few seconds. It felt like I had on the wrong glasses - I was constantly trying to bring the scenes into focus and the continual motion, coupled with the random focus and quick glimpses of things I wanted to see clearly, made me feel stressed, strained and then annoyed.

Add to that the ending, which leaves so many issues dangling, and, overall, I found it very unsatisfactory.

Despite that I still gave it a 6. If you can handle triple rides on a roller-coaster then you'll probably really enjoy this film. If you get motion sickness easily then you may want to pause it every 10 minutes and focus on the wall!

I didn't have high hopes for this one, having read the reviews. Monster movie meets Blair Witch. But it's absolutely an OK flick.

Great effects and an extremely cool apocalyptic atmosphere. Definitely worth a watch.

Hand-held camera can be tiring, yes - but in this case, and combined with the great effects, it works.

The plot itself isn't exactly news, but as it's all seen from the antagonists point of view and with no further explanation, you really get that "what would I have done"-feeling.

Yes, we need explanations, but I really like that Abrams hasn't tried to tag on an ending explaining what happened.