I must admit that I hadn’t been looking forward to Cloverfield with quite the same enthusiasm that some on the internet had been. But the teaser trailer was good fun, as did the idea of a film with no stars, and all that it brought with it. I will just mention that having two brothers look quite so similar meant that I could barely tell them apart towards the beginning of the film.
Cloverfield’s premise is that the whole thing is seen through the eyes of a video camera that begins videoing a going-away party and continues as the attack on New York begins.
I do have a couple of issues about how they did it. Unlike The Blair Witch Project, this isn’t shot on a video camera. It may have been shot digitally – it looks like film – but it’s certainly not made with any kind of consumer camera. Somehow, that detracts from the idea. And I suppose it would be a little unfair to note that the beginning of the film – colour bars and a timecode – the contents are labelled as coming from an SD card, when the premise of the film, with bits of previous footage being recorded over, requires a tape. The characters also refer to a tape.
But I’m being a little disingenuous since I think that this is a pretty good monster attack film. The characters’ point of view as we run around New York at first trying to escape, and then looking to save a girlfriend, means that we never really find out what’s going on, how the monster was unleashed, or even ultimately how the end comes. Instead it’s bits of TV news in apartments and in a looted electrical store.
The monster itself is interesting and dinosaur like, although it also has a certain post-Lord of the Rings element to it, with the skin not dissimilar to Gollum.
The film has a devil may care attitude that I quite enjoyed, and the unknown cast meant that like Starship Troopers, you didn’t know who was going to live or die, or what would happen. That’s just so refreshing, as heroes being invulnerable can be no fun.
The whole thing comes in at under an hour and a half which is thoroughly refreshing. So well worth a brief diversion.