28th Feb 08: I misspent an hour and half today watching this minicam monster movie. It’s tediously compelling. The sheer pointlessness was almost disturbing.
I wasn’t sure what was in the mind of the makers. “Lets do a Godzilla movie but like really, really realistic?” The script was vacuous and didn’t help the earnestness of the performances which were actually pretty good. I’ve never seen a movie so undiversified in its characters. NY seemed to have eliminated all elderly and children.
There was no higher purpose. It was “ohmigod lets get outta here” again and again. There wasn’t any sacrificial heroism. What do movies like this say about us? That we should empathise with the shiny beautiful young yuppie people? That we should readily accept that they implicit represent of all humankind? That America and Manhattan in particular is symbolic of our highest pinnacle of civilisation? That we should be shocked and in awe if its under attack and losing? I just couldn’t relate or even care about them.
What worked though was the unrelenting grinding and overpowering soundtrack. The shudders, thuds and shrieks build up into a convincing and head throbbing crescendo. And when the military strikes build up too the sense of jeopardy oozes off the screen. But the hero’s search for his loved one didn’t cut enough through all the effects to make a satisfying climax. It was bleak and brutal. That’s another thing that worked though, the realism (although the spawned aliens was a reference too far and didn’t add much to the horror anyway.)
Was going to wait for the DVD but may now not bother ...
ReplyDeleteThis was one of the worst visits to the cinema I've had in years (and this from a man who's seen Alien Versus Predator 2!). The near-constant motion sickness didn't help, admittedly, but that wasn't the biggest problem.
ReplyDeleteSee, everybody was gorgeous, and though it was happy to adopt the hand-held technique, Cloverfield didn't have the guts to follow that through. Cue, for example, an extraordinarily heroic pose for the starcrossed lovers as the end of the movie neared. It was quite pretty but it was not what we'd signed up for. Not me, anyway.
The hand-held cam did provide a handy excuse for not revealing exactly what the monster was, though, and that was good. A mysterious monster is genuinely frightening. Unfortunately once we know what it actually is - well. A dreadful disappointment given the effect of the trailer - and it sinks in slowly that actually that's ALL this film has going for it. The mystery, the feeling that this might be something new, it might be a really new, creepy... oh. Oh, dear. It's an Independence Day for the new millennium: shoulda stuck with the trailer.
There was only one situation which could have made this worth seeing. Instead of crowbarring in so many drop-dead gorgeous people into a supposedly real-life scenario, then lighting them beautifully etc... they should have just gone with the formula they clearly had stuck in the back of their heads anyway. This film should have been released as the final episode of Friends. I can't decide which Friend I'd have had dying at which point, but trying to work that out kept me entertained for the last forty minutes of this pseudo-creative, whitewashed heap of shit.
Also £2 ought to have bought me a hell of a lot more Revels than I actually got.