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Review by David DiMichele

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No other party could possibly be worse than the one depicted in the new fanboy-hyped YouTube generational movie Cloverfield.

We’re introduced to a bunch of measly twentysomething-year-olds and just like that, we’re supposed to be on board with them for the duration of the movie - but thank God it’s only 84 minutes in length. In the very first scene - the first fifteen minutes - we meet six separate characters. It felt just like watching one of my drunk friends videotaping a party he attended a week ago, a party full of cheesy jokes and plenty of drama which seemed really forced.

Two brothers: Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Jason (Mike Vogel), the one for whom the party is being thrown because he’s leaving Manhattan to take a job in Japan. He's a cool dude who also manages to conquer an insurmountable task that James Bond himself would be jealous of. Let me round up the rest of the usual suspects: the crappy and ignorant Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) who doesn’t really want to be at this party in the first place (I don’t blame her); Hud (T.J. Miller) is the man behind the handheld camera (whom we the audience rely on to show us the action) - he trudges through the people just to get testimonials about Jason; Lily (Jessica Lucas) is the woman who got this whole party started; and finally, Jason’s ex-girlfriend Beth (Odette Yustman) with whom he has an argument (about her bringing her new boyfriend to the party) just moments before the attack happens, which sets him up for that insurmountable task. Once director Matt Reeves has accomplished his daunting task of "establishing" the characters, if you can call it that, he throws the attack at them, which means he shoves it down the our throats and hopes we will feel sorry for these shallow characters as they try to survive.

On the bright side, the film really works during the first ten minutes of the attack. To ignite a series of unfortunate events, a ship near the Statue of Liberty gets bombarded and before our characters know it, the earth begins to rumble, fireballs coming from the sky crash into downtown Manhattan, and then there's that image of the Statue Liberty’s head being hurled down right in front of the party spot. Watching this happen, I’m nervous as well as anxious at this point. The Brooklyn Bridge even sees some cool action. Right now is when Cloverfield has me at its mercy, but lo and behold, as the movie progresses, the attacks become less scary and more predictable. The quick glimpses of the creature work as they stirred my imagination regarding what this could possibly be, as opposed to when we get the full view of it - which is when my interest got lost. Hey, maybe they didn’t need to show the monster at all. The Blair Witch Project worked wonders using that technique. Made us all believers!

The only inventive idea from Cloverfield, its director, and its producer J.J. Abrams, (who created one of TV’s greatest shows in Lost,) was to capture the rapture on a handheld-queasy-happy-for-the-entire-movie-camera (Blair Witch style), thus telling the story as it unfolds in real time. Hud does a fantastic job of never letting the camera get damaged and that splendid battery never runs out. We do not know any more or any less than our main characters do, and we see all that occurs through Hud's lens. For me, this movie doesn’t quite live up to its hype.

Film Rating: ** out of ****

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Comments (1)

Cloverfield is a great flick.

I love this film. I saw it twice in theaters. I see your points David, especially about the beginning, but the film evolves it something great in my opinion. The rest of my opinion is here: http://film-book.com/review-cloverfield/

Film-Book dot Com , March 16, 2008 | url

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