To summarise ‘Cloverfield‘ - this is a film which will REALLY divide audiences. And I’d probably bet more people will loathe it than love it!
And there’s a good (and by no means) superficial reason for this divide - the stable tool of Hollywood in recent times has been “the shakey cam”. We’ve all seen it used in ‘The Blair Witch Project‘ and to a more professional extent, Paul Greengrass exploited it in ‘The Bourne Supremacy‘ and ‘The Bourne Ultimatum‘.
It has always been a sore point with audiences - it’s never bothered me to be honest. But as it becomes more and more common with portraying action scenes and car chases / crashes (see ‘Bourne’ examples), audiences are becoming more and more peeved with it.
This is where the audience for ‘Cloverfield’ will likely be divided. It takes the idea of “shakey-cam” and spreads it out over 85 minutes. A large percentage of cinema-goer’s will do one (or all) of the following:
- Give up on the film half-way suffering from a case of nausea.
- Give up on the film as they can’t track exactly what’s going on in action scenes
- If you’re in the same cinema I’m in, start giggling / chatting on their mobiles and generally ruin the film for everyone else (note to self: write a blog post complaining about this later).
And unfortunately for them, there’s more than enough innovation in the film than I’ve seen from an action movie (or “monster movie”) in a long long time. The movie (in my eyes anyways) oozed of innovation and something special and different and here’s where I shall start discussing details of the plotline so click ‘Show’ below if you’ve seen the film.
show
Firstly, the innovation.. we’ve all seen the handy cam used for movies like ‘The Blair Witch Project’ but I believe the shaky-cam in ‘Cloverfield’ was used more for the actual experience of feeling like you’re witnessing it first hand. And post-911, something like this is actually quite intense to sit through. I will agree the shakey-cam can be quite nauseating, but it didn’t take away from my enjoyment and heightened the sense of actual witnessing what the characters were going through.
The intro and outro to the film were both very “JJ Abrams” inspired.. felt like they were out of one of the Dharma Initiative videos on ‘Lost‘ but the lack of music or title credits (while has been done before) also added something to the experience.
Most of us probably thought we wouldn’t get a glimpse of the monster (but it was shown in detail) and it looked impressive - not appearing too CGI-esque yet quite un-nerving. It actually reminded me of something from the ‘Quake‘ games - anyone else?
I’ve been mainly praising the film but it’s not without it’s flaws - the opening montage at the party with the “testimonials” was long, drawn-out and a tad boring. I know we needed to introduce the characters and a general backstory but it lacked humour and pacing. Shame!
And another problem was the woefully cringe-worthy reunion of Rob and Beth. Urrrggghhh.. a sickly sweet, soppy and over-acted moment thrown in there was just not necessary, although somewhat inevitable.
It has a very solid crew behind it - it was directed by Matt Reeves (who created the very under-rated TV show ‘Felicity‘), produced by “golden boy” JJ Abrams (co-creator of ‘Lost’, creator of ‘Alias‘ and whose next directorial effort will be ‘Star Trek‘ this coming Christmas) and was written by ‘Angel‘, ‘Alias’ and ‘Lost’ writer Drew Goddard.
The cast are all practically unknowns… and to be perfectly honest, they’re not particularly standout performances either. But running around and acting scared for 85 minutes will never stretch your “acting muscles” - but no doubt, many members will get their chance in more demanding roles after the success of ‘Cloverfield’.
I could talk about the film in detail as it’s quite an interesting film, but as I said at the top of the post, it will really divide audiences and people who enjoy it will discuss elements of it in detail while people who didn’t still suffer motion-sickness. Oh, and by way, I’m joking by “pigeon-holeing” people who didn’t like it exclusively to those who couldn’t bear shakey-cam, the film has more than a fair amount of flaws. But personally weighing the pros and cons up, I enjoyed it a lot (probably more than most action movies of the last year or two). But that doesn’t mean I would like to see a ‘Cloverfield’-esque movie every Summer.. but it’ll no doubt happen now that it’s proved successful.
Rating: 
