By Matt Brown
Published on January 8, 2008
I’ll just come right out and say it: This is a brilliant idea for a movie. It amazes me that until now there has never been a movie told from the perspective of the actual victims on the ground. You know the ones I’m talking about, the hapless citizens who inhabit all those apartment buildings that Godzilla squashes during his many rampages? Well, this is their movie. Except instead of Godzilla, there is a giant sea creature/alien/who-knows-what stomping all over Manhattan.
The movie begins at a going away party for Rob, who has just accepted a job in Japan. To document the occasion Rob’s best friend, Hud, is tasked with recording the festivities as well as recording personal goodbye messages on Rob’s handheld video camera. The celebration is complicated when Beth, a friend Rob slept with weeks earlier and has lingering feelings for, shows up to the party with a date. After a brief but heated argument, Beth and her date leave the party.
Realizing Manhattan is under attack by some unknown living thing, Rob and friends attempt to evacuate the island by way of the Brooklyn Bridge. As Rob is crossing the refugee-packed bridge, he receives a panicked phone call from Beth saying she is trapped in her apartment and requests his help. Rob, wanting to save the woman he loves attempts to re-enter Manhattan and come to Beth’s aid. This, of course, leads to many harrowing circumstances and dangerous run-ins with the mysterious creature that threatens the city.
I especially admire the choice to film the entire movie using a cheap handheld home video camera. While this idea has been used before in “The Blair Witch Project,” (which I’m sure this movie will be compared to merely because of this similarity) I still find it a fantastic choice.
Since this movie is told from the perspective of average people, not scientists or military types, it makes perfect sense that the method of story telling would be low quality rather than a slick, sharp, shiny type of film. These are ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances, and the movie looks like it. When the audience catches a peek of the actual monster, the view from the handheld camera actually makes the beast seem realistic and scary. While the movie was actually scripted (by veteran TV writer Drew Goddard) the urgency of the plot and amateurish camera work essentially gave the movie’s dialogue a spontaneous feel.
There are a few aspects of this movie that were less than stellar. The most notable flaw to this movie is that the story is very run-of-the-mill. The entire film relies on the visual.
“Cloverfield” wasn’t well cast either. The actors all played their panicked roles as well as can be expected, but I didn’t believe for a second that I wasn’t watching actors play their parts. I wondered why a movie that went that extra step to shoot with low grade film and cast unknown actors in order to make the movie more believable didn’t cast anyone who looked like a normal person? All the actors in the lead roles where drop dead gorgeous. I guess it’s just one more thing for the audience to look at in a movie made for visuals.
Despite the few minor flaws, this is a movie well worth seeing. Once you get past the dull first 20 minutes, the excitement hits out of nowhere and it doesn’t let up until the very end. While not a great plot, the visual elements of “Cloverfield” do more than keep you entertained the whole length of the film. This is a movie you want to see on the big screen, because I doubt it would have the same effect on DVD. I suspect this movie will be one of those movies people tend to reference in everyday conversation, so it may be wise to see it for yourself.