Movie Review: Cloverfield
- Director: Matt Reeves
- Genre: Horror/Sci-fi/Thriller/Action
- Year: 2008
If you take the Blair Witch Project and inject into it a much greater budget you get this, complete with the headache that plagues you half an hour after watching the movie due to the (purposely) poor camera work. At least the effect of the screen movement is not quite as powerful when you are watching it on a big screen at home as opposed to the silver screen at the theaters while sitting on the third row (and I am not talking about the stadium seating area, I am talking about literally, the third row).
The movie is about what one can expect, essentially the footage of a single tape collected in Cloverfield by the Army after the disaster. Interestingly enough, the tape was recorded over previous material, which means that in certain occasions, not only do we get snippets of that doomed day in which Manhattan got its ass handed to it, but also of an event that took place a few days before between the protagonist, Rob, who is scheduled to go to Japan for a job promotion and Beth, the girl that he has liked since forever.
The cast is rather limited, though the extras are many, and basically we focus on Rob, his brother Jason, his brother’s girlfriend Lily, Hud, who is Rob’s best friend and Beth, whom as we already know is the apple of Rob’s eye. Except she does not look much like an apple…more like a splendid Victoria’s Secret model, which is not a bad thing, at all.
Everything is told, more or less, in chronological order (save for the bits from that previous recording that are accidentally leaked through) and explain the events as witnessed by this group who, rather than escaping Manhattan along with the crowds, decide to follow Rob in a quest to save Beth, for he is haunted by his last actions towards her, which brings up the under the surface plot in this movie, the idea of being aware of one’s present moment at all times and not putting things off for tomorrow. Everything that takes place to this handful of people, is because of one person’s regrets about what they did that night and their desperate need to rectify it.
Entertaining, thrilling and kept reasonably credible, given the circumstances, Cloverfield is a pretty solid movie. Thankfully, even the jarring camera work is kept semi-controlled, for even then, you can tell it was carefully thought out and not as chaotic as if an untrained man had truly been handling the camera. The formulaic monster movie is also given a face-lift by employing not only one monster but a number of smaller monsters as well. And the way some of the actions play out on screen, leave the audience with a healthy amount of curiosity in regards to certain details that can not be credibly explained in the movie. This, more than anything, made the movie interesting. The result is pretty believable documentary style fiction that may not be mind blowing, but certainly worth the watch.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Notes: Some violence and disturbing imagery
Quote: Hud: Okay, just to be clear here, our options are: die here, die in the tunnels, or die in the streets. That pretty much it?
Rob Hawkins: Yeah… that’s pretty much it.