Cloverfield Didn’t Suck
Cloverfield — an American monster movie done in the style of a YouTube video blog — doesn’t suck. I can’t really wrap my head around that. It’s not a cinematic masterpiece: it doesn’t want to be. It is, however, incredibly fun and surprisingly humorous.
I saw the midnight showing last night, and the audience was completely divided. Despite everyone’s fascination with the character Hud (played by GW Alumnus TJ Miller), half the audience hated the film, and the other loved it: people were yelling. I heard both sober and drunk arguments from the TV-saturated college kids snuggling up next to one another in front of JJ Abrams’ brainchild.
===VERY MINOR SPOILER ALERT AHEAD (a little more information than “It’s a monster movie & one of the characters in the movie is the person on the other side of his handheld camera, documenting his reality)===
Most of the arguments against the film went like this:
A) It had a lack of clarity.
B) It was unrealistic.
Responses?!
The clarity quibble is essentially the following rant:
“We don’t get to know what’s going on, like…what kind of monster is this? What kind of food does it eat? Does it have weaknesses? Is it angry? Is it in love? How many prophecies have presaged this attack? Can we find said prophets? Can they help? What did Nostradamus say about this?”
Regarding realism, it’s a fucking monster movie. If there is a monster destroying NYC, it’s not that huge of a leap to believe that HUD kept the camera with him the whole time. Everything else seemed pretty okay by me.
===SPOILER OVER, NOTHING SPOILED===
I would recommend you go see this film in theaters. It’s going to lose a lot of the excitement on DVD (or Blu Ray, you rich fucks). I laughed way more than I was scared, but that’s not to say it wasn’t scary at times.
It was a monster movie and it wasn’t ridiculously horrible, not at all.
So…If you’re in the market for a monster movie that can also be a good movie, go see Cloverfield!
Travis Helwig with Kirk Larsen
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Comments
thanks for telling me to see it in theaters. I did so today. and I’m very glad I did. however, DVD is reccomended for those with severe motion sickness.
it scared the shit out of me. because that’s my home. and when I had the choice of taking the subway or a cab home, I took the cab.
the only “reality” aspect I would dispute is the new york reality. they made it seem like a walk from spring to 59th was about 20 minutes, when it would probably take more like 2-2.5 hours. I’m aware he didn’t film the whole thing, but the characters did NOT seem as fatigued as they should have (i.e. she was still wearing heels.)
as far as the “background” goes, my friend pointed out at the end in the coney island scene you see something fall out of the sky into the ocean. I said it was an egg that hatched and grew underwater.
again, thanks for enforcing the whole “in theaters” thing. I definitely would have waited otherwise.
to even consider this movie in any kind of reality-minded method of criticism is to refuse one’s self the opportunity to enjoy this movie. I thought it was great for what it was. So, for the film fans out there, take a break and see this movie. it is excellent for what it tries to be - entertaining. also, tj is wonderful and totally steals every scene that didn’t rely entirely rely on cgi.