Cloverfield [2008]
Director: Matt Reeves
Actor: Michael Stahl-David, T.J. Miller, Mike Vogel, Jessica Lucas, Lizzy Caplan, Odette Yustman
Before it came out, the information that was released about this movie was tightly controlled by the production company. A trailer and several websites were already available even before it officially had a name, and the online community was going ga-ga for this film, analysing everything that was released. They put things through spectrograms were let loose on soundbytes and image enhancers on each little piece of imagery, and speculation ran rampant. It even got caught up in another viral marketing piece that got started for the Alpha Omega roleplaying game, which was considered part of the film’s marketing strategy for a long time. In short; crazy town! The film had a lot to live up to, I guess.
By now, there’s so much information out there that if I give a brief synopsis of the movie, I won’t be giving away too much information. If you really don’t want to hear or see anything about it, you’d probably not read this review anyway, so I’m just going to go ahead and do it.
I had expectations for this film. Having read all the speculation and all the coveted pieces of fact released by the production company, I got the impression that the movie was going to be different than it really was. I thought the attack on Manhattan by the beast would be better explained, while right now it isn’t explained in the slightest, which, I think, is fucking awesome. I’m a big proponent for leaving things up to the viewer’s imagination, and not just pre-masticating the entire film for the audience, so I was happy like a pig in shit.
The story is relatively simple; Manhattan, New York – Rob is about to move to Japan to start a new job. His friends organise a massive goodbye party and his best friend Hud is filming it all, getting goodbye messages from all the people in attendance to give to him as a farewell present. Just before midnight a massive explosion is heard and the entire group goes up to the roof of his apartment block to see what they can see. There’s another big explosion, sending big chucks of flaming debris all throughout the city, causing massive destruction and confusion. The entire party moves out into the street and tries to get to safety. As they get down, they hear more and more reports from others in the street about a massive monster rampaging through the southern end of Manhattan, and another piece of debris comes bouncing through the street; the mangled head of the statue of liberty. The group gets split up and tries to look for safety. Rob, his brother Jason, his friend Hud (still holding the camera), Jason’s girlfriend Lilly and another friend Marlena try to decide what to do, just when the military starts to appear on the scene, trying to orchestrate a counter-attack. And so starts a massive scramble of the group to safety, while the creature still destroys and kills its way through the city, shedding smaller creatures, about the size of a large dog, off its body that also aid in the carnage.
Wow. I mean wow. This film had my heartrate up almost all throughout its duration. The visuals, while shakey are very satisfying, even though you often just want to rewind and make sense of what you just saw, and you really get the feeling of being right in there. The glimpses you catch of the monster are usually unclear, or the view is partially obstructed by buildings, but they give you just enough to be utterly thrilled. I loved this film. There’s not much character development going on, because the story covers only a small amount of time and the characters are thrust into this extraordinary situation in which most people just huddle down and go into survival mode. The acting is pretty solid, and you really get the feeling throughout the film that you’re watching someone’s unfortunate home-video.
Conclusion; it’s a fantastic monster movie. With a twist of lemon. At the end, you might be left with a dissatisfied feeling of wanting to know more, and getting some explanation. If you’re that type of person you might want to think twice about seeing this. :)
