Movie 666

By Demon

Cloverfield starts like an episode of the Real World and quickly improves when a giant beast and his spidery offspring lay waste to New York. The movie follows a handful of young protagonists down decimated streets, through dark subway tunnels, and into teetering buildings as they search for a lost friend while the military battles beasties in the background. Everything is told through the eye of a single video camera, being used to document the event. (article continues after ads)

It’s a brilliant idea with stylish execution and rapid pacing and delivery (84 minutes running time, please let this be a trend). The “documentary style” is particularly interesting from a visual perspective, featuring camera angles indigenous to consumer video along with frequent journeys into near-abstraction as the recording device is shook, jostled, dropped, spun, and otherwise abused on a journey through urban hell. One particularly nice touch comes when one of the characters wipes blood from the screen / camera lens after a disastrous encounter with one of the fiends. The shot of blood spattering the lens has become an action movie cliché in recent years, but this is the first time I recall a character actually wiping the blood away.

On the other hand, all this kinetic frenetic camera stuff makes for a really rough ride at the multiplex (motion sickness pills recommended) and one wonders if Cloverfield might feel more at home at home on DVD than displayed on a full-size cinema screen. The color bars and timecode at the beginning of the film yearn for the small screen as well, as does the general absence of star talent to fill the big space. This is not a flaw of the film, so much as a curiosity — Cloverfield simply raises the question, does “reality TV style” make sense in the theater?

Along with novel style, Cloverfield features some exceptionally provocative images of urban warfare and destruction, including the severed head of the Statue of Liberty crashing down a city street and a B1 bomber carpet bombing New York City. In the film, civilians are actively caught in a battle between nameless terror and military response, calling to mind both 9/11 and the current situation in Iraq. Although good and evil are clearly demarcated in the film, the attitude of Cloverfield seems to be more generally humanistic than politically specific. At one point, lead character Rob Hawkins tells the camera that he and his friends are caught in the middle between the monster and the military, a sentiment surely shared by people around the globe trapped in the crossfire between warring factions while seeking nothing more than the safety of friends and family. It’s a timely update to the giant monster genre of Godzilla and Rodan, films born in 50s era Japan in the smoke of a devastating global war and the fallout of two city-destroying nuclear blasts.

Related posts:

1. The Hulk Versus the Military
2. Simulation, Sublimation, and Cinema on Halloween
3. Blood and Circus Maximus: The Audience Appeal of Gladiator
4. Film and the Future: Media After September 11
5. Lost in the Woods: The Blair Witch Project

Trackback Post