Year Released: 2008 Directed By: Matt Reeves Starring: Michael Stahl-David, Mike Vogel, Odette Yustman, Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T.J. Miller (PG-13, 85 min.)
Although the online community has been positively abuzz regarding Cloverfield since a mysterious teaser trailer ran before screenings of Transformers this past summer, no one, not even the intrepid folks at cloverfieldclues.blogspot.com, really knew much at all about the plot of this ultrasecret project from Lost creator J.J. Abrams and writer/director Reeves. I'm not going to spoil that mystery either, but I will say this: Cloverfield is the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in my adult moviegoing life, and that's coming from a guy who knows his Gojira from his Gamera and his Harryhausen from his Honda. Cloverfield isn't a horror film – it's a pure-blood, grade A, exultantly exhilarating monster movie in the grand tradition of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, It Came From Beneath the Sea, and, to a lesser extent, Merian C. Cooper's King Kong. What makes Cloverfield so memorable and such a genuinely riveting filmgoing experience has less to do with the creature itself, whatever it is, and everything to do with Reeves' direction and a whip-smart, stylistically invisible screenplay that dispenses entirely with any and all genre rules and, brilliantly, views the catastrophic, literally earthshaking events through the lens of one character's digital video camera, complete with rough, nerve-jangling, in-camera edits and an "official" Department of Defense Eyes Only time stamp. It's Blair Witch meets Godzilla, with the audience allowed only as much information about what, exactly, is happening as the characters have themselves, and it works fantastically well. And that's key to the film's second stroke of genius: its nearly subconscious evocation of our current paranoid, terror-phobic times. The pall of post-9/11 dread hangs over Cloverfield in a very emotionally tangible way, although it should be noted that Reeves and Abrams never directly refer to it (although they do, in a nice nod to genre enthusiasts, reference the one-sheet poster for John Carpenter's Escape From New York). Sitting in the theatre, watching all hell break spectacularly loose in Lower Manhattan, again, you can't help but wish that giant behemoths and warring Gargantuas were all that our postatomic citizenry had to worry about. No such luck, and no giant flying turtle to save us, either.
Cloverfield was the worst movie I have ever seen and I have seen some bad ones.
THE HOST?Virgil PJan 21, 2008 - 10:56 am
This reviewer talks about the tradition of monster movies but fails to mention the best one in decades, a Korean import called THE HOST. I can't believe CLOVERFIELD comes close...
Warning, BAD!A ViewerMar 08, 2008 - 09:08 pm
This movie literally made me and 2 friends sea-sick with its rapidly changing, drunken sailor camera work. Scenes are shot from the point of view of someone running, stumbling, falling and getting up to fall again and again and again. Scenes are shown sideways and at a 45 degree angle for much of the movie with the point of focus lurching spasmodically from point to point. It is very, very hard to watch - we had to leave in the middle, we felt sick! I don't post reviews often but people should know this movie's camera work is a totally failed experiment in the extreme and may actually make them ill. In addition the dialog and plot are weak - yuppies struggling against a cliched monster with with extremely heavy handed references to 9/11 - buildings collapsing on themselves in the manner of twin towers, blown up statute of libery head etc.
Warning - this is among the worst movies I have every seen.
Cloverfield was awesome.guestMar 10, 2008 - 12:38 pm
the only problem was that everyone totally deserved to die and not enough of the yuppie scum actually did.
Antichrist Lars von Trier lives to affront again. Chaos, indeed, reigns. - Marc Savlov The Blind Side John Lee Hancock, director of The Rookie, scores with another sports drama, this time concerning a true football story. - Kimberley Jones Fantastic Mr. Fox Opens Wednesday. - Marjorie Baumgarten The Messenger Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster play two members of the military's casualty notification team, which delivers bad news to soldiers' next of kin. - Marjorie Baumgarten Ninja Assassin Opens Wednesday. - Marjorie Baumgarten Old Dogs Opens Wednesday. - Marjorie Baumgarten Planet 51 In a switcheroo, animated aliens fear the human in their midst. - Marc Savlov Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire Much like the title character Precious, this rough-hewn movie overcomes the unlikely odds for its success. - Marjorie Baumgarten The Road Opens Wednesday. - Marjorie Baumgarten The Twilight Saga: New Moon Edward and Bella are back for more thwarted young vampiric love. - Marjorie Baumgarten Until the Light Takes Us This music documentary chronicles the history, ideology, and aesthetic of Norwegian black metal. - Raoul Hernandez
