Cloverfield

"It's Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project". I'd imagine it's what JJ Abrams wrote on a napkin next to the Statue of Liberty's head flying through the air. It probably was also the one sentence pitch to some feckless suit. And yes that's exactly what Cloverfield is. It's a monster movie in which a huge allegory attacks New York, all the while events are shot on a normal video camera so it looks, you know, real.

Thing is Cloverfield is exactly like The Blair Witch Project in the sense that it's a film worth seeing once, although make sure it's at the pictures as it'll probably fail miserably as a spectacle on the small screen. But on the big screen that hand-held digital video thing just looks different somehow. And of course that's the point. Cloverfield taps into the phenomena of footage that appears on the news shot by "average citizens" showing tragedies or fat people fall down uncovered drains. The language of what we see as real has changed thanks to this as news crews are never on hand to capture an event whereas most punters present probably have a camera phone. As such we associate realistic with shaky camera work, a lack of editing and a failure to frame or capture things as they happen but rather have the camera swing to find them right after much in the same way if you were to turn your head after hearing a loud bang behind you. Thanks to this the language of cinema has been changing. Whereas once upon a time black and white was somehow considered realistic, it was how events were broadcast on the news, today those features listed above are how we gauge realism in fictional films (see the work of Paul Greengrass, in particular the second and third Bourne films).

So when you want to show disaster on film what better way to have the audience believe it than have the entire movie shot through a digital video camera by someone on the ground as it happens, only ever catching glimpses of what's going on, with the only pieces of "editing" occurring when the camera is shut off? Even if that disaster happens to be a huge bug-like monster ripping the arsehole out of New York.

Of course when something like this happens it's usually a big giant metaphor for some real event. Godzilla was in effect the destruction of Hiroshima writ large on downtown Tokyo by a massive fire-breathing Lizard. And so Cloverfield's monster is 9/11. And incase you fail to spot this there are a number of moments that bring back the images of that day to make the point clear. The problem is is what is the filmmakers point actually is in relation to the tragedy beyond the fact that many people died and panic engulfed New York. Godzilla spoke out against the devastating effects of the nuclear bomb. Cloverfield can't really just be saying "terrorism and disasters are a bit bad aren't they?" can it? Of course the exploitation of 9/11 is somewhat troubling, even in this era of extreme exploitation in the horror genre and beyond.

There are other problems with Cloverfield from a purely filmmaking perspective. Whereas the actual concept is a good one, very quickly it must have become apparent that endless scenes of mass crowds panicking as a big monster attacks will begin to grate and lack tension. As such the attempts to ramp up said tension and make us care about those affected ultimately fail. The first twenty minutes are similar to Hostel's in the sense that too much time is spent establishing the characters, while all the time in the back of the viewer's head is the concept of the film. Both are the same as they both fail to make us care about anyone involved. All of Cloverfield's characters come off as self-obsessed yuppie dickheads and very soon you think to yourself "I kinda want to see this lot die." Is it some clever, subversive attempt to make us question why we would want that and want to see movies involving that sort of thing, or is it just poor judgment on the filmmakers part, thinking that these types of people are cool and likable? Think it's probably the latter.

As for the tension, the problem with a big massive beastie attacking in what is going to be a film about the people affected, thus following them, is that he can't follow. So there are a number of lapses into cliched filmmaking, all of which take away from the realism of the situation that the big chap hasn't actually damaged. Firstly there are the little versions falling out of its arse, designed entirely, it seems, so that we can get the obligatory disused subway tunnel scene. Plus they can actually sneak up on our protagonists, mind you so does the big yin in a scene I won't ruin, but think of T-Rex's sudden appearance at the end of Jurassic Park and the "how'd he manage to get in here unnoticed?" conundrum. Then there's the bleeding obviously military cover-up, mass infection storyline, it looks like a sequel may well be on the cards. The one that wrangles most though is the whole twin towers set piece. It is a move of sheer laziness, as if the writers realised that they needed a big action moment. For a movie that has attempted to make the situation feel very real it is a stunning lapse in judgment to have the characters even climb up there and move between the two roofs.

And as I said the main reason that it is so frustrating is that when Cloverfield works it works damn well. In these days of shaky handheld footage on the news from ordinary members of the public Cloverfield genuinely works at suggesting that its events are real, especially in the early moments of the attack while the monster is largely covered. So for those aforementioned problems to creep in is really frustrating. The problem is that my opening sentence and the image of the Statue of Liberty's head landing in the street appear to have gotten the movie financed. Some poor sod then had to write it, and stretch the idea out for 85 minutes. And therein lies the problem with J.J. Abrams. He's a wonderful ideas man and certainly knows a striking image. The problem is is that tends to be all he has, meaning that everything he's behind looks fantastic until the reality of having to then make an entire movie or TV series based on it sets in. There doesn't ever seem to be any real thought put into what comes next.

The thing is I'd say that Cloverfield is a film that everyone should see once. It has a great premise and for a while at least it does work. Its flaws mainly come from hindsight and the film itself is enjoyable, if empty, fun. In the end though the bloke in the rubber suit battering hell out of a model Tokyo had a lot more to say.