Film review: Cloverfield

Cloverfield @ IMDB

The review begins with a tinge of sadness as my Grandfather died a few days ago. He (and my Grandmother who died over ten years ago) had a profound effect on my life, in that they watched a Hell of a lot of films. And I mean a lot. I watched a lot of them with them, age certificates be damned*. But one particular brand of movies I remember being introduced to thanks to them is the Godzilla films.

Let's get this clear: I love Godzilla films. I can watch them all day. I cannot get into words my profound disappointment at the US Godzilla film, despite the teaser trailer being the greatest moment of my 15 year old life when I saw it.

So, we come to Cloverfield. As we all gathered from my previous excitement, I was looking forward to this film. No. I had been waiting for this film since that stupid T-Rex lookalike missed stomping on Matthew Broderick's smug face. It's rubbishness was proved years later when the real Godzilla wiped the floor with him. I still had my copy of Godzilla vs Megalon and continued to wait and hope.

A set up to further disappointment, you must be thinking. No film could withstand such a burden of expectation set upon it's shoulders.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong.

It is as follows: New York Rich People + Giant Monster x Army = The Best Film I Will See This Year. Simple as that.

The conceit of the film is that, Blair Witch style, it is the discovered camera footage of a small band of people who were running around New York as it gets leveled by something big and angry and even more angry. It speaks to our current news culture, the jittery footage grabbed by the bystander. The subway scene in particular brought back memories of the mobile phone pictures of the 7/7 attacks in London.

Yeah, fair enough, 9/11 is the obvious visual comparison as a) it's in New York and b) buildings fall over. One rather scathing review I saw on TV described the film as "9/11 porn" which is somewhat harsh. But you can't say it isn't there because it uses the same visual grammar of that day, only with a giant monster.

Ah yes. A giant monster. Do you see him? Oh yes. And watching it being attacked by soldiers and tanks and fighting them off is one of the most impressive things I've seen on a cinema screen.

So the monster is good. The humans? Good as well. You get enough of them in the beginning to actually care for them and that was good enough for me.

My only complaint is in the style of it. Now, that's not to say that I hated it because I didn't. The handheld style is amazing and allows for some truly terrifying moments. But it also gave me real bad motion sickness. I mean real bad. But I wouldn't have the film any other way.

In conclusion. I loved it. It has a great ending, cracks along at a great pace and it's not too long either. The only way it could have been better would have been if the Big G himself had been the monster. And he would have been proud to have put his name on this film.

But the only question is this: I saw the first trailer when I saw Transformers which was at least 6 months ago. So was the film worth the wait?

In a word? Yes.




* One of the most horrendously embarrassing moments of my life was due to this: we sat one night to watch Once Upon a Time In America. I must have been around 10. Something like that. Great film: De Niro, Sergio Leone, superb.

Then we get to the most prolonged rape scene ever. With me sat there, next to my grand parents.

That there answers a lot a questions.