85 Minutes, Color, USA, 2008

Written By: Drew Goddard

Directed By: Matt Reeves

Dramatis Personae:

Michael Stahl-David is Rob, victim of a surprise party at the beginning of the movie, and, for lack of a better candidate, our hero for the film.

T.J. Miller is Hud, Rob’s friend and documentarian of the events to follow – which means we don’t get to see much of him on film.

Mike Vogel is Jason, Rob’s ill-fated brother and plotter of the surprise party.

Jessica Lucas is Lily, Jason’s girlfriend and emotional rock of the group.

Lizzy Caplan is Marlena, friend of a friend who finds herself thrown in with our heroes.

Odette Yustman is Beth, the object of Rob’s affection…and object of his futile quest as things get really bad.

Commentary:

I think it’s a safe assertion to make that J.J. Abrams has usurped Joss Whedon’s throne as the Lord of Geeks. Both of them are renowned for creating richly detailed fantasy worlds, full of memorable characters and engrossing original concepts. Both of them have garnered huge cult followings, and both of them excel at messing with the heads of their audiences. Where Abrams has the advantage, however, is in savvy. Somehow managing to sidestep Whedon’s tendency to alienate TV network executives, Abrams has marketed his concepts extremely well, and created an intellectual empire few other creators can match. I’m sure there are Whedonites out there right now looking to draw and quarter me, or at least argue something to the effect that slicker marketing does not equal better storytelling. To which I can only respond: when you have to crawl back to Fox, you’re doing something wrong.

Anyway, being the Lord of Geeks Apparent, it would seem a logical step for J.J. Abrams to tackle that most geeky and awesome of film genres, the Kaiju film. Few things conjure up a Cinematic Nerdgasm quite like the Giant Thing Running Amok™. Thus, Cloverfield, produced by Abrams, and written and directed by frequent collaborators Drew Goddard and Matt Reeves. In true Abrams fashion, however, we are given something we were not expecting. While a unique and enjoyable moviegoing experience, Cloverfield strikes something of a false note, especially if you’re like me, and just wanted to see a Giant Thing Running Amok™.

The premise of the story is somewhat similar to The Blair Witch Project: we’re shown a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie, explaining that what we are about to see is footage taken from a video camera found in the ruins of what was once New York City, following an incident codenamed “Cloverfield” by the military. The footage starts simply enough. According to the timestamp in the corner of the screen, it is early morning on April 23^rd, in a penthouse apartment somewhere in Manhattan. A man films his girlfriend in bed as she wakes up, and they talk about spending the day together.

The footage ends, and the timestamp jumps forward a month. The camera is now in the hands of Jason, who is filming his girlfriend Lily as the two of them go shopping. His brother Rob has just gotten a promotion at work, which is forcing him to relocate to Japan, and they are planning a surprise farewell party for him. Lily wants Jason to film “testimonials” at the party: goodbyes and well-wishes from all Rob’s friends. Jason pawns this duty off on his stoner friend Hud, who nonetheless takes to the duty with determination and enthusiasm.

As Hud drifts around the party filming random people – and becoming smitten with Marlena, a friend of Lily’s who just showed up for a couple of drinks – he inadvertently stumbles upon an argument between Beth and Rob, which ends with Beth leaving the party early and Rob retiring to his room. Hud soon learns what’s going on: Beth and Rob, inseparable friends since childhood, slept together a month ago (the happy couple on the footage that Hud is accidently taping over were in fact Beth and Rob). Not wanting to complicate things with a lifelong friend, especially on the eve of his leaving the country, Rob nipped the relationship in the bud, and the two have been estranged ever since.

As Jason has a heart-to-heart with his brother about letting true love slip through his fingers, something suddenly happens. The city is rocked by an earthquake, and the power briefly goes out. A news report indicates that an oil tanker has apparently exploded and capsized in the harbor, not far from the Statue of Liberty. Our party guests go up to the roof to see if they can see what’s happened…and what they see is more than what they bargained for. A building is consumed in a massive explosion, and debris rains down on them. They flee to the streets, where they hear the roaring and see the progress behind the skyscrapers of some gigantic THING. A few moments later the severed head of the Statue of Liberty lands in the middle of the street.

Panicked, our heroes start running away from the chaos, with Hud recording all of it for posterity. As they reach the Brooklyn Bridge, Rob gets a cell phone call from Beth. He can’t make out anything she’s saying, but she sounds scared and hurt. Before he can respond, the Bridge is destroyed by the same creature. Although our four principals make it out alive, Jason is lost in the collapse, and is presumed dead.

Back in Manhattan, a shellshocked Rob plunges into action. Grabbing cell phone batteries from an abandoned store, he resolutely sets off to find Beth and rescue her. Hud follows him to try and talk some sense into him…and sees news footage on one of the TVs playing in the store. The military is fighting a giant monster in the middle of city. As Hud watches, the monster drops smaller versions of itself that swarm and overwhelm the soldiers. But before he can watch more, Rob is on the move again. Despite countless appeals to his reason, Rob is determined to go back into the city and rescue Beth. Lily volunteers to come with him. Hud and Marlena tag along too, if for no other reason than not to be left alone in a city that is falling apart. Thus begins their odyssey through a ruined New York, as they traverse ruined streets, claustrophobic subway tunnels, and devastated buildings, on a quest to find Rob’s true love.

Cloverfield’s central conceit is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. By positioning itself as found footage, the movie is allowed to go in a direction most Kaiju films don’t: the experience of the people at ground zero of a Giant Monster Attack. This is not told from the point of view of the generals and scientists working hard to find a way to neutralize the monster. This is told from the point of view of a couple of hapless ordinary people who find themselves staring giant mutant radioactive death in the face. It’s not something that’s often done – at least, not for the entire running time of a movie – and technically it’s done quite well. The lighting and camerawork really do convey the notion of amateur footage, and there’s thankfully a minimum of shaky-cam stuff to be found. Another brilliant touch is the casting of mostly-unknown actors; Lizzy Caplan is the biggest name in the film, which should tell you something. Since we don’t recognize any of them, they’re entirely believable as ordinary people. And since our heroes are almost always running AWAY from the action, the money required for specials effects can be kept to a minimum. Just the odd fleeting glimpse over the shoulder and the occasional money shot, and that’s it.

Unfortunately, therein lies the double-edged sword. Because when you go to see a Kaiju movie, you want to actually SEE the Kaiju a couple of times. I mean, there’s a Giant Thing Running Amok™ out there! I want to see it running amok! I want to see the monster stomp down Broadway, crushing cars and knocking over buildings! I want to see tanks and jets launch rounds and rounds of ordinance into it! I want to see strange-bearded scientists butt heads with square-jawed generals over whether or not to use The Bomb! I mean, that’s why we watch Kaiju films, isn’t it? Massive Urban Destruction. In Cloverfield, we see little. There are a few skirmishes between the military and the monster, but again, these are seen either from a distance or without clarity (mostly because poor Hud is running or ducking for cover at the time). So much is left unexplored, because we as the audience are limited to the things our characters experience. And our characters are four ordinary people with a video camera. As a consequence, we get only fleeting, tantalizing glimpses of the larger picture. What is the monster? Where did it come from? Why is it destroying the city? What happened to Marlena behind that screen? We never find out, because our characters never find out. We’re just along for the ride. It’s almost as infuriatingly oblique as an episode of “Lost”…which makes a lot of sense.

If taken as a technical filmmaking exercise, Cloverfield is a success. It’s a short movie, a thrill ride that lasts just long enough. It’s also a very intimate film, shot on video with a small cast of characters getting through the worst seven hours of their lives. It’s very clever. But as a monster movie, Cloverfield is less successful. This is a monster movie that is not about the monster. That means that we have to rely on our characters for the drama…and unfortunately our characters aren’t individually well developed enough to be anything other than just generally nice and appealing. This also means that making Cloverfield a monster movie was kind of pointless. This is about four people trying to survive a disaster; without the monster, this could be ANY disaster at all. And the serious tone of the film makes it considerably less fun than to be expected from your typical Kaiju film. Suddenly the hapless fleeing puny humans the monster crushes underfoot are actual people, with lives and loved ones who mourn them. On the one hand, that’s commendable. On the other, it’s kind of depressing. It makes you wonder: how many Robs and Beths did Godzilla separate over the course of all his rampages? How many Marlenas and Huds and Jasons? Maybe it wasn’t bad writing that drove Godzilla to become a hero; maybe it was guilt.

Things To Look For:

- Although we only get to see the monster in all its glory in the last few minutes of the film, it’s a very good design. The monster is a strange mutant amalgam, looking to be equal parts insectoid and reptilian, with the hint of deep-sea creature thrown in for good measure. It has multiple arms and legs, some of them seemingly vestigal. The smaller versions of itself that it drops are even nastier, reminiscent of the warrior bugs from Starship Troopers. The encounters our heroes have with them are brief, but intense and terrifying. We never get a really good look at them; they’re just masses of flailing limbs and teeth. The creatures manage to be just alien-looking enough to be truly scary, even though we never get close enough to one to see it all.

- Screenplay writer Drew Goddard has penned many episodes of “Lost,” focusing mainly on the characters of Locke and Sawyer. Which is fine with me; they’re probably the two most complex characters on the show. Of course, they’re also the two characters with the strongest inner demons to wrestle (Jack’s got a few too, but he’s so self-righteous that it’s more satisfying to see him fail). The ones with the greatest tendencies to hold onto convictions that aren’t necessarily quantifiable, and so the ones most likely to act in instinctive, non-logical ways. This seems to be Goddard’s specialty, because in Cloverfield we have several characters acting against common sense in order to hold onto something important. Note Rob’s single-minded determination to get to Beth and rescue her. Note also Hud’s determination to record everything that happens for posterity. Hud quite literally has a death-grip on that camera, only ever putting it down once that we see. Even when being attacked by mini-monsters, even when pulling his friends out of rubble, that camera stays glued to his hand. Of course, the easy reponse to this is that, if it didn’t, we would have no movie. But still, that’s some single-minded dedication on Hud’s part.

- From what I’ve read, director Matt Reeves so enjoyed the experience of making Cloverfield that he’d be interested in making a sequel, or even a series of films. Evidently there’s still plenty to shoot: this film depicts only one group of people’s experiences in the “Cloverfield Incident,” and there’s plenty of room for more. Again, the thought of that is a double-edged sword. There certainly is still plenty of life left it the concept, but I REALLY hope they do it right and just make movies. This whole multimedia viral marketing campaign thing – admittedly, very clever and part of J.J. Abrams aforementioned savvy – gives me a headache to think about. There are all these pieces of the mythology out there in various places, and sometimes you have to find them all just to figure out what’s going on. I mean, when did everything become a MULTIMEDIA EXPERIENCE? Whatever happened to just GOING TO SEE A MOVIE?

- I have heard it said that Cloverfield is to the 9/11 attacks what the original Gojira was to the atomic bombing of Japan: an artistic fantasy response to a foundation-shattering act of real violence. It’s not too much of a stretch to see the parallels…and it’s somewhat alarming to see how accurate that assertion is. It’s also somewhat unsettling to see each country’s response to their individual catastrophe as filtered through art. In Gojira, the horror is a monster created from Science twisted to destructive ends, a perversion of life and nature striking back at the force that created it. Science created it, and it is Science, not force, that must defeat it. There is a faint but discernable glimmer of hope to be found in the resolution: yes, things are bad, and good people have been killed, but we have pulled together and defeated the monster, and we have learned something from the experience. There is nothing so hopeful or straightforward to be found in Cloverfield. Here we have a monster which descends upon America’s grandest city without warning and without any obvious provocation, and wreaks havoc indiscriminately. We know nothing about it, where it came from, or how to stop it. Everything we throw against it fails, and in the end we are forced to sacrifice the very thing we are trying to defend in order to bring this monster down. There is no stalwart hero or beatific scientist who offers a solution; there are only ordinary people, flailing around helplessly in the face of destruction. The story ends, quite literally, not with a bang but a whimper; there is no happy ending here. Not even a bittersweet one. In the end, all we have is the horrified realization that the world as we know it is ending, and we do not, and might never, know why. The metaphor is obvious. Cloverfield is not a fun Kaiju movie. But then, neither was Gojira.

Written words (c) 2008-2010 Tim o'Brien. Not to be used without permission. Other content, including images, is intended as a Fair Use pursuant to 17 U.S.C. sec. 107.

Date Posted: January 22^nd, 2008

Complaints? Comments? Drop Me A Line!

Home Page

Archive Page