Watched: Cloverfield
Watched: Cloverfield
Review: 5/5
Apparently a very polarizing movie. I loved it from start to finish. I surprisingly caught up with the character story, so much that I was actually shocked when the monster action started. The movie really is presented as though filmed from a single camera. The special effects were amazing, most especially for how tightly integrated into the movie they were. It really looked like incredible things were actually being filmed by a hapless guy with a camera. So great! I loved that the camera guy was a character. Some people dismiss this movie outright because of the shaky camera, but it seriously didn’t bother me at all. I was actually expecting it to be worse than it was. There was also some wonderfully surreal intercutting between the monster movie and a film that everything was being recorded over.
sMom said
Jan 20, 2008 @ 12:01 PM
We completely agree. Dad knew that it was a hand held effect movie but I did not and so at first wondered if that approach would continue. I’m glad it did and it did not bother me at all. What an amazing editing job to keep the flow but also keep the reality of a person not all that familiar with a camera documenting the story. Dad and I agree that the camera had a very, very good battery, we want one. But that was believable. And the icing on the cake was the tape over segments tossed in at random. What a neat story!
Stephen said
Jan 20, 2008 @ 12:12 PM
Well if you assume that the guy is actually starting and stopping the camera (e.g. that the DoD has archived completely unedited footage, which is the rule) then the battery only had to run for about an hour and a half total.
On my camera it is really easy to tap a button to start/stop the recording, which works very nicely.
sMom said
Jan 20, 2008 @ 06:50 PM
True enough, so actually what we should covet is the camera. That one got really bashed around and kept on ticking. Didn’t you love the last footage? And did you stay through all the credits?
Stephen said
Jan 20, 2008 @ 11:59 PM
Lewis, Lance, and I saw it again tonight. We didn’t stay through the credits, but we did spot the splashdown in the very last scene.
Dad said
Jan 21, 2008 @ 11:13 PM
There was a snippet of conversation (like a bad radio transmission) at the very end of the credits. We were walking out of the theater and did not understand what was said.
Stephen said
Jan 22, 2008 @ 04:01 PM
When you play it backwards it’s someone saying, It’s still alive
donald said
Jan 22, 2008 @ 06:23 PM
I saw it, it was pretty good for what it was, but I could frankly have cared less about any of the human characters except for Marlena, at least after she picked up that iron bar and went wailing on a critter. I dunno, I understand the limitations in character development imposed by the cinematographic conceit, but I needed more than they gave me in order to not root for the monster to chow down on some entitled upper-east side yuppies.
And as much as I love an unresolved ambiguous ending, the situation merited just a bit more fleshing out than they gave it. I might’ve tried to put one more layer on the onion, perhaps begin the movie as a military briefing on the videotape, with some offhand comments and visual references to the broader context.
Oh, and did they have to knock the head of the frickin’ Statue of Liberty? For what tried to be a refreshing take on the city destruction genre, that’s as cliched a trope as exists.
Stephen said
Jan 22, 2008 @ 09:51 PM
The onion has more layers, they just aren’t in the movie. A ton of backstory is out on the net, mostly gleaned from the ARG involving the movie: http://cloverfield.despoiler.org/
Marlena was a really fun character. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Hud is joking around about the flaming homeless guy and Marlena gives him a quick sidelong smile. It’s the highlight of what I feel is the true romance story in the movie.
Dad said
Jan 23, 2008 @ 12:23 AM
Thanks for the link. I heard ”....still alive” but not “it’s”. Maybe the voice is Rob saying he and Beth are “still alive.”
donald said
Jan 23, 2008 @ 11:33 AM
I personally find it irritating when a movie relies on external props to convey its backstory. If the backstory is interesting and relevant, you should at least have allusions to it in the movie proper. (This is also what irritated me most about Donnie Darko.) Like Blue Sun in Firefly, fer instance, or the various clues about What Really Happened in the Cryogenic Facility on the Evening of 1999-12-31 in Futurama :)
Stephen said
Jan 23, 2008 @ 05:04 PM
Yes that’s true, but there are allusions to it in the movie proper, e.g. Rob’s brother is wearing a “Slusho” t-shirt and Rob is going to work for the Japanese company Tagruato.
Donnie Darko has external props? That movie was awesome in its own right!
Lewis said
Jan 23, 2008 @ 05:27 PM
I think one of the major points of this movie was that we don’t have any back story, we don’t have any information on what the heck is going on. I think they wanted to show us what it could be like if Godzilla attacked the city, to give us the feel of real panic, real fear. The best part about this movie is not knowing what the monster is, where it came from, so really, the story didn’t need to be fleshed out anymore than what it was. Panic is what they were going for. So I don’t think it so much as relied on external props as just provided them for people who were obsessed with the movie.
However, if you are interested in the full story, or at least more of the story, there are numerous websites to help you try and get an understanding of what was going on. It’s not like they are important to what the movie was, just additional references if you wanted to know more. Though I think we’ll get all the information we want when they do Cloverfield 2 from the perspective of the military (lots of those soldiers had helmet cameras):D
I also found that I was attached to Marlena’s character more than the others because I feel like we were put in her shoes. She didn’t really know those people, but was sort of dragged along for the ride. At the beginning of the movie we are given as much if not a little bit more back story than Marlena would know, so it helped us empathize with her character more.
I actually stayed through the credits the first time through and thought it said ‘Help us’ but apparently if you play that backwards, it says ‘It’s still alive’ or just ‘still alive’. I thoroughly enjoyed the end scene that shows something splashing into the water in the distance. It seems to tie everything in together and I really enjoyed how they did that. I dunno, just seems scary, tantalizing, eerie?
Stephen said
Jan 23, 2008 @ 06:59 PM
Spot on.
I think an awesome sequel (parallel?) would be the monster seen from all the non-human cameras. You’d get views of the monster from ATMs, traffic cameras, and the tons of surveillance cameras spread through the city (and from the drilling platform!). Done right it would both be a great portrayal of the fight between monsters and military and would highlight just how recorded we are.
Then again, it would be great to see the military fight from the ground, and the bombing cameras. Shades of Starship Troopers.
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