Cloverfield

Saw Cloverfield today with Dean. Dean liked it, but I thought it was boring. It had all the vertigo-inducing hand-held camera shakes of Blair Witch Project, without nearly as much of the suspense.

I found the actions of the characters to be wildly unbelievable (a Godzilla-sized monster just knocked down two skyscrapers...let's run towards it). It's so unbelievable that at one point, one of the characters, who as best we can tell, doesn't know or particularly like the main characters, actually says, "what am I doing here?" and her co-star has to say, "you could have gone over the bridge, but you decided not to, it's your own fault.")

The hype of the movie is clever--the trailers tell us that SOMETHING is going on, but not what. The answer is very straightforward--a godzilla-sized monster is attacking New York.
As the movie progresses, our interest in the monster rises, and the viewer develops questions (what is this creature, what is it doing here, why is it mad, what are those little creatures dropping from the big one?). But these are left completely unanswered. The format limits the story-telling ability, yet other movies of a similar nature (Blair Witch, the recent The Mist) still managed to provide tantalizing answers (evil spirits from a serial child-killer and giant aliens from a scientist-caused rip in the space-time continuum respectively) to those questions while keeping the details shrouded in mystery. So we know it can be done, but it doesn't happen in this movie, suggesting a real lack of capability of the writer/director.

Whereas the end of the Blair Witch Project literally scares the beejezus out of you, and Mist nearly so, here, the ending is anticipated and sad. I really had little sympathy for the main characters by the end of the movie. At the end, I left thinking, "well, if this were a real video diary, I wouldn't have any reason to show it to anyone, and there would be no reason for the FBI to keep it a secret (as is suggested)."


Overall, I give it a thumbs down.