Theatrical Review of Cloverfield

With a viral marketing campaign hot on the heels of "Snakes on a Plane," the movie formerly known only as "1-18-08" sent internet fan boys into a tizzy. Websites, clues, checking background details in the promotional footage…an independent observer would have thought these people were nuts. But it is easy to understand the obsession: produced by "LOST" guru J.J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard of the same program, there was a possibility the amateur-looking trailers were merely a tantalizing glimpse at something more than an American "Godzilla." Sadly, it doesn't even live up to that low bar.

As Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) is about to relocate to Japan, his friends throw a going away party. During the get together, the apartment building shakes and the news claims a tanker has tolled over near the Statue of Liberty. But outside, with the head of Lady Liberty rolling down the street, it becomes abundantly clear a tanker is not responsible. Which then begs the question: what is?

Clocking in at a very lean 90 minutes, this is perhaps the most substance free film released to mainstream media in the last decade. Quite literally, nothing of any consequence happens in "Cloverfield." People run, they scream, they die, a giant monster smashes some buildings, there's some more jumping and yelling…a bit of blood, some missiles and that's about it. This is a movie built on the flimsiest of premises and supported with only scant creature effects--far less than a production of this kind usually entails.

One of the problems here is the creature, or rather, the lack of a creature. Don't get me wrong: there is a monster which terrorizes the city. There are even mini-creatures scurrying through subway tunnels and into buildings. But because our field of vision is limited to what a home video camera captures, every glimpse of the attacker is fleeting. A moment here, a flash there. Even at the end when we see it from the air at daybreak, it's never completely clear what we're seeing. Are there multiple legs like a crab or arms or tentacles? Is that a beak, similar to a bird? And what are the small creatures which fall off the main one?

Much has been done in the past utilizing scant views of monsters. The original "Alien" and "Jaws" are masters of this type of filmmaking, whether intentionally or out of necessity. The complete figure of the alien is never seen until the finale in the escape pod while the shark was created with more music than practical effects. Director Matt Reeves tries to be clever regarding what we see of the monster. A tail sweeping across a bridge, gray-ish skin through a cloud of smoke in an extreme long shots. But because the camera is constantly shaking, we're never given a good look at what these characters are up against.

Add to that the lack of characters with any depth, thereby negating emotional investment into them on the part of the screenplay or the audience. There is a half hearted attempt in the first twenty minutes at rounding out each of the party participants into broad stereotypes: the hard to get girl, the frat boy, the successful one, a female obsession, and so on. What the script forgets to do is create people we're going to like, people with brains and common sense and savvy about the world.

Each time one of the pawns croaks, we're reminded about how very little we know about them. There is only one moment of pure emotion for the audience in the film: in a subway tunnel, when Rob talks to his mother about a tragedy. It's a brief scene, but it at least draws the viewer into the film in an active (as opposed to passive) way. Nothing else, from the beginning to the very end, gets us involved.

Especially the Hollywood-generated plundering of New York. Much has been made of the similarities between 9/11 and "Cloverfield." Critics gave mentioned how the events we see through the hand held camera borrows on imagery of that fateful day, putting us in the shoes of people trying to evacuate the city. It's rubbish if, for no other reason, than we know planes are not flying into buildings. We know there is something else out there. No monster, imagined or created, can hold a candle to the terror of knowing humans are attacking humans. We expect a monster from a nightmare to terrorize; we don't expect that behavior out of fellow homo sapiens. Besides, we are always cognizant of the fact we're watching actors running from a threat purposely kept off screen. There is no threat level, no sense of dread.

If "Cloverfield" wanted to use our memories of September 11 effectively, the screenplay would have given us a situation grounded in reality. Instead, there is a half-hearted attempt to explain why a video camera is in operation instead of dropping it and saving lives (people are going to want to know how it went down, goes the argument). There's no argument from military officers, nothing from other survivors and no second thoughts about such mundane things as battery life. (To be fair, though, Rob's cell phone battery dies very early in the film, nodding to reality.)

The most annoying aspect to the film, though, has to be the conscious choice of shooting with a hand held camera. As alluded to before, it never allows us to focus on any one thing for a prolonged period of time. Moreover, it captures moments it has no reason to capture, such as brief quiet moments in the subway tunnel. If the true reason of keeping the camera running is to show the survivors how New York was destroyed, is anyone going to honestly care about the stories of the "little people," especially when the camera is more nauseatingly self-conscious than "The Blair Witch Project?"

Everything "Cloverfield" tries to do, it fails at. Create tension? Nope. Mimic reality? Sorry. Attention grabbing characters? Not a chance. Which is all a shock, considering the pedigree of the creative personnel. One of the most anticipated films of early 2008 lands with a resounding thud. A charitable 4 out of 10. Once again, marketing sells a movie not worthy of that sale.