'Cloverfield' thoughts

I saw 'Cloverfield' last weekend. It's the American Monster movie from the first person perspective of the humans running in fear of the creature destroying the city. It's not bad but it didn't quite click either. I found it increasingly difficult to believe that the people we were following would continue to bother with the camera. Part of the problem may have been my recent re-watching of 'Diary of the Dead', George A. Romero's latest zombie movie, which uses a similar story telling style. The characters in that movie start out in a position where this sort of activity would seem natural and discussion over this becomes part of the story. In 'Cloverfield' there's just too much running to make lugging a camera around seem reasonable. The movie barely runs 80min which suggests that the filmmakers found it difficult to keep the story interesting from this perspective. While I applaud their apparent lack of desire to fill out the movie to a minimum of 90 mins, it does make it feel more like an experiment that never completely gelled.

I don't care for the design of the creature but am willing to note that's a personal preference. You get a good look at it over the course of the movie but it's not in the movie much. Given the way the story progresses, this makes sense but it is still a little disappointing. That's probably due to my previous experience with watching giant monster movies and having the expectation that the creature will be on screen for a good, oh, half the film.

Due to the story telling style, we rightfully learn little about the creature itself (not unlike the ghouls in 'Night of the Living Dead' to return to that reference point). It's not important what the creature is or where it came from, the important point is that it is here. This lack of information got my buddy George all sorts of curious and we watched one of the few extras on the disc as it claimed to discuss the creature in more length. This is where I got annoyed.

The idea for the movie came from a trip to Japan and seeing all the Godzilla toys (good start). America hasn't really had a creature movie since King Kong (starting to go downhill, the idea that they were apparently trying to project was that American movies haven't had an identifiable giant monster creature character since Kong but the way the statement is made, one would be left thinking that there hasn't been a American Monster movie since 1933 which is very untrue) and they decided it was time. They then give us no concrete information regarding the creature but provide insights as to the sort of things they were thinking might be true about the creature as it destroys New York. The designer gets very enthusiastic about the idea that the creature could be a lost infant crying out for its parents. At this point I grew annoyed because, from his manner, he seemed to think this was a new concept. "In the sixties," I noted to our group, "the British called that movie Gorgo." On the way home I also recalled the Japanese 'Gappa' which used the same idea. By their phrasing they showed either a lack of knowledge on the subject (which isn't necessarily a bad thing as it might prevent them from falling into the same cliches as the earlier kaiju films) or a deliberate attempt to restate history (which made me question how much of a misphrasing that the earlier line was about Kong).

It's worth seeing but that's about it. I think I'm also annoyed because it's the sort of thing I would have liked to do but, obviously, didn't.