CloverfieldRated PG-13
Starring: a bunch of young actors you've probably never seen before including
Michael Stahl-David,
Lizzy Caplan,
Jessica Lucas,
T.J. Miller.
Directed by:
Matt Reeves, who also directed...episodes of Felicity!?
Where were you on 1.18.08? If you were lucky, then you weren't in Manhattan when something big appeared out of nowhere and turned the Big Apple into apple sauce. At least that's what the classified camcorder footage recovered from the catastrophic event reveals. Wait? That was only a movie?
In the mysteriously named film
Cloverfield, the story is presented in the first person by way of a camcorder that was supposed to document a going away party thrown in honor of young Rob Hawkins, who is headed to Japan (where monsters usually wreak havoc) for some ambiguous career move.
The party is going well and we get to see all of the hottest, hippest, and coolest yuppies in NY in the same apartment. Hudson, or "Hud" (think
Heads-Up Display), the character left with the task of documenting the party on video, goes randomly from guest to guest gathering farewell statements as a going away present for Rob. We learn that these are just normal people with no standout qualities, no recognizable (yet super-hot) faces. This lends itself to the realism the film-makers where trying to achieve, no doubt. And this goes on for sometime. But just long enough for the viewer to realize that their lives are just as mundane as our own, kind of like watching a slide show of someone else's family vacation. An older woman behind me in the theater even exclaimed "What is going on!?" She was bored, and probably ready to walk out.
Literally, about 5 seconds after the restless viewer hurled her lack of faith toward the screen, NYC was rocked with a huge explosion, which kicks the events of 1.18.08 into action. The film seemed to know just how much the audience could take of the seemingly banal story up to that point. It was just enough to get you onboard with the idea that this is not a movie, this is a document of something that really took place, with real people.
The story itself is almost non-existent: run or die, and that is enough. Our main character Rob does have a goal in finding his life-long friend who is a girl, who is trapped in midtown. She's hot, and she's worth it, as is noted by the intermittent footage of Rob and Beth that previously existed on the tape Hud is using to record the party. A rookie move to be sure, but fortunately for us as viewers it gives us some insight into their blossoming love connection, adding emotional depth to his quest along the way. Instead of completely running for safety, he is running in the opposite direction towards the danger, a truly heroic act. And a truly believable one at that, just think of the fire and policemen of the real Manhattan disaster, 9/11.
I wondered if this movie would have ever even been conceived had the world not witnessed the raw, multi-angled reality of 9/11 on video, a collection of hyper-real images filled with emotional power and action that Hollywood had not achieved in its 100 years of storytelling. Well, in a perverse art-imitating-life fashion,
Cloverfield does its best to mimic the atmosphere and feeling of being eyewitness to a horrific event very similar in nature to 9/11. And it does it hauntingly well.
This is the most intense, most interesting movie to have a January release since who-knows-when, and probably could have owned the summer of '08. If only someone could have told the "monster" to hold off its attack until late May!
At any rate, go see the movie/event/document/classified footage that is
Cloverfield.
A word of caution: Sit back farther from the screen than you are used to. Some of the action footage, specifically shots where the guy with the camcorder is running for his life, are dizzying and could give you a headache.
Labels: Film Review Movie Action Sci-Fi Cloverfield
