Monster Takes Manhattan

After months of anticipation, I finally know the secret of Cloverfield. I wasn’t sure if the artist’s rendering I came across the other day was accurate, but what i saw on screen was in fact a far more horrifying version of this sketch:



Terrifying.

I’ll actually try to avoid true spoilers and stick to vague allusions. The much-anticipated J.J. Abrams project lives up to the hype, though the shaky camera movements may cause dizziness and nausea for those prone to that sort of thing. Half the people I saw it with were fine. I found relief by occasionally focusing on something stationary in the theater and looking away for a few seconds, but that’s my only complaint.

If you don’t own a television or a computer, you might not be familiar with the film. Otherwise, you’re aware of the shaky footage that shows New Yorkers fleeing as the head of the Statue of Liberty crashes on to a street and buildings and bridges collapse. We see people running and we see military firing up at something. What are they running from? What are the army guys shooting at? Do you actually catch a glimpse in the movie? More than a glimpse?

The premise is interesting and the film doesn’t deviate from the limitations of it. A going-away party goes horribly wrong when this thing arrives, and the guy filming it keeps rolling. The entire movie is from this point of view, which puts you directly in to the action. It’s like a roller coaster, but mercifully short. At about an hour and fifteen minutes, I’d say it was the perfect length. And because the taping is being done over an old tape, they slyly work in “flashbacks” from time to time whenever the taping stops and the original footage comes through. Watch carefully, as there are clues in the background that even I missed.

My only complaint outside of the film was the young audience, rowdy high school kids who reeked of marijuana and were giggling and making comments. This subsided once the film made the transition from character development party scenes to fleeing and survival. Apart from the durability of the camera and the nature of the threat, the film is otherwise “realistic” in its depiction of how a disaster like this would go down. Characters do make some irrational, emotional decisions, but their motivation kept me on the edge of my seat. As a general observation of films, I realize I’m more invested in the fate of couples. Once someone’s mate is taken out of the equation, I lose interest in the survivor, like there’s no real reason to keep him or her around. As long as there’s even the slimmest chance of a reunion though, I’m hooked on the tale.

Abrams has always done well with twenty-somethings, and the cast of relatively new faces is very convincing. Their journey through hauntingly familiar ruins is made lighter by Hud, the character carrying the aforementioned indestructible camera. A lovable loser, his comments and narration were great. In one scene, he gets a little too eager when the girl he’s crushing on references a comic book character. If I had a nickel for every time...

In the end, Cloverfield delivers. Without deviating from that single tape, we get a complete story of friendship, love, and horror. I’ve read complaints that the film lacked answers, but these were probably from teenagers cracking wise instead of listening to key bits of dialogue and watching the background carefully. All the information we need is on this tape, even if the main characters lack the omniscient point of view a mainstream monster movie would have presented. Some stuff can be pieced together, some can be theorized, and some isn’t important in the grand scheme of the experience. Experience is the key word, and the key to appreciating Cloverfield.