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Cloverfield *SPOILERS*

posted by Matt Knicl at 2:18 am.

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I had a negative predisposition going into Cloverfield. It was Godzilla, but The Blair Witch Project. Neat. I figured that the movie was all hype, that for the movie to make sense, we would have to participate in a Lost Experience-like website. My expectations were not dispelled as the movie began, the unnecessary character development recorded by a drunk baby that apparently has minor arm spasms every two seconds. We get it. The movie is from the point of view of a hand held camera. Move on.

© Paramount Pictures

Of course the frame of the film being from government archives was contrived. We were bombarded with cliché almost more than the monster by the army’s rockets. “I’m so scared,” “why is this happening?” and “I love you” blah blah blah moments were plentiful. This was not surprising as the man behind the film, J. J. Abrams, is the creators of Lost, and we all know how the characters are going to talk before they open their mouths and predict the over-dramatic endings with almost 100% certainty. “Switch to night vision” prompted me to turn to my friend and say, “There are going to be monsters right behind them.” And let’s not forget the same lack of medical knowledge Lost displays - someone impaled with a rod getting up an running, a cloth apparently a quicker fix than intensive surgery to, oh I don’t know, the stop bleeding?

But for all the stuff I didn’t like, there was plenty that I did. The scene where the military runs up and we are in the middle of the firefight was amazing, and you fight back the tears when Rob gets the call from his mom. I loved the visuals of the creature and while the little monsters paralleled the American Godzilla too much for my taste, their attack scene in the subway was perfect to portray with the hand-held camera. I loved not knowing where the monster came from (even though Wikipedia says you can see something crash into the water in the last scene) and I found the action and the monster’s presence peppered in the story enough to keep me totally engrossed in the film.

I appreciated that the movie knew it was a B-Movie. While it took itself seriously, I feel like we are not supposed to believe it and we catch ourselves when we do. But what bugs me is there wasn’t enough of the monster. i know I just said the monster’s presence was well-spaced throughout, but that’s for what we were given of the creature. I honestly think we should have more of the beast and this goes back to the movie’s creator J. J. Abrams and Lost. He’s like Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development - he gets off on being withholding.

© Paramount Pictures

I was annoyed at the movie’s attempts to make me care about that characters. I say this because in Lost and Cloverfield the characters never develop on their own. These types of shows are incapable of actual human interaction so they thrust their “human” characters into outlandish situations and force them to mature. Rather than take time to build a relationship, I’m going to isolate X characters into Y location with Z trying to kill them and they’ll learn to love and sing and dance together. I’m not saying I hate that stuff, in fact my DVD library is filled with it, but what it means is there are two elements to the movie: people drama and crazy s#$%. In the end, I didn’t go to the movie to see people. I don’t even know the characters names to be honest. I went to see the crazy s#$%! It’s the hook, the gimmick, and pretending to have your movie to be about one man’s love for his girlfriend and his idiot best friend and the girl who for all logical reasons (other than as a plot device) should have taken off at the first sign of safety makes as much sense as a video tape remaining unscathed after a bombing. Oh wait…

The tactics Abrams swears by need closer examination. He just isn’t telling us what is going on. That’s not clever, it’s easy. Once we know what the deal is in Lost, will it still be watched? I’ve seen Cloverfield, but now that I know it’s an alien and it’s still alive and I’ll never see it again, why should I care?

In the end I’d say see the movie once. It will be fun while you’re watching it but you’ll be pissed at the abrupt ending. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t bad. It just sort of was.

Matt Knicl: My name is Matt Knicl. I'm a U of I alumn and one of those unemployed English majors Garrison Keillor likes to make fun of. I've been reading comics since high school and one day I would like to write them. My goal is to expose readers to what is out there in the world of comics and using my English powers, show what is worth reading or not. I can be reached at buzz.comics@gmail.com.