Cloverfield Review

"Cloverfield" reviews

Movie

Cloverfield

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-02-08 01:31:27

Rating

3/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

If Godzilla were to knock up Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield would be their spawn. It's not quite as groundbreaking as those two, but the movie is definitely ground-shaking--partly from viewers trembling in their seats.

Story

Cloverfield may go out with a bang, but it fades in with a whimper, albeit for good reason. It's the attack of…Exposition 101, a necessary evil never more so than during the movie's beginning. We meet the characters with whom we will watch Manhattan get shredded like a piece of paper over the course of one night and, more importantly, the handheld video camera that will capture it all. Rob (Michael Stahl-David) is leaving for Japan and his buddy Hud (T.J. Miller) is charged with filming his going-away party and the goodbye speeches that accompany it. Hud keeps the camera steady on the object of his drunken affection, Marlena (Lizzy Caplan), until Beth (Odette Yustman) shows up for a showdown. See, she and Rob were lifelong friends before hooking up and sabotaging everything, and it only ends on worse terms when she leaves the party hastily. With the exposition complete, Cloverfield soon moves on to that attack on NYC shown so often and cryptically around the Internet. It is not a manmade attack--common knowledge for those who partook in the movie's viral Web campaign--but further description might necessitate spoiler alerts, and nobody wants that. This much is safe to say, however: Savor the opening scenes' relative quiet, because your hearing may never recover from what is to come!

Acting

Where Cloverfield shelled out some cash for special effects, it compensated with a starless cast. Most moviegoers won't recognize a single name or face of the actors who portray the six main yuppies on the run from God-knows-what, but that helps this movie much more than it hurts. Besides, no mere human could measure up to the real star, that thingamajig terrorizing Manhattan. The whole cast comes off well, however, by acting spontaneously--we are, after all, supposed to believe this is as-it-happened footage and these twentysomethings were caught off-guard. Best of all, there isn't that clichéd hierarchy of roles we're used to seeing in similar movies; there is, for example, no true Hero character, no Will Smith from Independence Day trying, with guaranteed success, to save the world. Stahl-David's (The Black Donnellys) Rob is the closest the movie gets to that sort of banality, but his quest is at least a somewhat realistic one. Miller (Carpoolers), as Hud, adds some comic relief from behind the camera, while everyone else--including Mike Vogel (Supercross) as Rob's brother Jason and Jessica Lucas (Life As We Know It) as Jason's girlfriend--is just the right amount of frantic.

Direction

What producer J.J. Abrams (Lost, forthcoming Star Trek) achieved off screen was just as remarkable as what director Matt Reeves achieves on it. Abrams, an Everygeek god whose marketing savvy matches his film IQ, embarked on an ingenious hush-hush campaign for Cloverfield that has simmered since its teaser premiered alongside Transformers--for a while the title was even a secret. The movie arrives with better-than-Snakes on a Plane Internet buzz and foam coming from the mouths of Abrams-philes everywhere. And director Reeves, an Abrams crony from way back in the Felicity days, does not disappoint. The incredible special effects, reportedly executed under a very tight budget by today's standards, make Peter Jackson's $200 million productions seem gratuitous--yet Reeves still evokes an indie/B-movie feel (thanks in no small part, of course, to the frenzied cinematography of Lost's Michael Bonvillain). Reeves' Cloverfield is whiplash-quick (80 minutes!), to the point and out of your head not long after the end credits; it's popcorn cinema done almost flawlessly. And Drew Goddard's (Lost, Alias) script is smarter than it seems, because he must keep the story contained within what is, for all intents and purposes, an impromptu videotape. That means casual moviegoers looking for escapism that is completely predictable might be disappointed.

Bottom Line

Hollywood.com rated this film 3 stars.

Movie

Cloverfield

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-01-25 15:40:17

Provider

MRIB

Review

Any film described as 'Godzilla meets the Blair Witch Project' is all but destined to disappoint. Particularly when it also nods to, amongst others, Alien, Independence Day, War Of The Worlds and even Will Smith's I Am Legend (Can you actually nod at a film that was made around the same time?). While it's unlikely to have quite the same impact as any of the aforementioned, it is a genuinely creepy offering that puts a fresh spin on the monster sub-genre.

The film opens with a government title card informing us that the film was found in a camcorder in Central Park – or, to be precise, what used to be Central Park – and is evidence of a genuine event.

This has echoes of Blair Witch, of course, as does the fact that we are lumbered with some characters who are teeth-grindingly annoying. One of the few exceptions to the rule is the guy in charge of the video camera Hud (TJ Miller), whose incessant comments on events prove to be sporadically amusing. He, like his friends, is at a farewell party for Rob, who is moving to a new job in Japan. As the booze begins to flow, we are given a hint of what's to come when a loud explosion rips through New York and the partygoers head out to the streets, where they're confronted with buildings aflame and the Statue Of Liberty's decapitated head. There they see the Godzilla-like monster and the bodies he has left in his wake, which we only glimpse through the look of disbelief on Rob's face

As the jumbled, sporadic disjointed events proceed it all leaves us with a host of unresolved questions and an overwhelming sense of threat of the unknown. And therein lies the key to the film's power. Without referring once to 9/11 it toys with our subconscious fears and leaves us pondering whether we can ever feel safe in a modern world.

Cloverfield Review