Movie Review: Cloverfield

Cloverfield [2008]

So, I like monster movies. And in 2008, they made this movie called Cloverfield, where the movie doesn't play out like, well, your average monster movie. Instead of following a third-person worldview, Cloverfield is a 'found footage' deal where a video recorder held by a bunch of people who's at ground zero when some really weird shit is going down is shown to you. Oh, and it's recorded over the dude's old holiday video tape and stuff. The movie follows the protagonists, Rob, Hud (who holds the video), Lily and Marlena as they escape the devastation that has wrecked New York City (i.e. a big-ass kaiju) and save Rob's girlfriend, Hud. The monster is barely seen other than at the end, and it's more of these characters attempting to survive the ground zero of a giant monster attack that's the whole point of it. There's the couple of justifications that Hud's camera is like latched on to his hand and he's partly using the video-recording bit to calm himself down, and the fact that our protagonists tend to not actually be super-involved with anything that's going on and more witnesses than participants also helps a lot in maintaining the suspension of disbelief. 

It's a pretty decent concept, and executed pretty well. It's a pretty tense ride as the party dwindles, showing some really great shots like the moment where they were jumping on the collapsing building, or when they are bought up to the military helicopter to witness the napalming of the monster, or the chaotic running that our heroes do as they encounter military forces trying to do their best to bring down the monster. But most of the movie's themes comes from just how chaotic everything is, as out characters are just flabbergasted by all the chaos, with Rob being shocked at his brother's death and clinging to the fact that he's going to save the girlfriend he had a fight with, and everyone else just along for the ride even if it involves going through the dark subway tunnels or jumping across buildings and shit.

It's a pretty decent watch, and keeping the monster's identity and backstory ambiguous is also well-done and fits well to the 'found footage' gimmick the movie's doing. We don't know if the thing is an alien, some Godzilla-esque ancient species disturbed from its slumber, a Lovecraftian Old God or what-have-you, but it still manages to be thrilling all the same. All that matters is that it's rampaging. It's going around tossing around the heads of the Statue of Liberty and shit, dropping tick-hound creatures that infect you with an exploding disease if they bit you.

It's a nice blending of thriller-horror tropes and the weird sci-fi kaiju tropes, and while it's honestly a straightforward plot, the execution is relatively well-done that it's a pretty enjoyable, if sllightly strange, movie.