Remind you of something?Cloverfield plays like a YouTube clip, and not a good one. At ENN (We Dig Films), we had several problems with the movie:
The people who made it clearly have never used a camcorder, or maybe they've never been off drugs when they've used one. Most people I know can film a party without shaking the camera like they're mixing margaritas in it. Sure, when you're running around town while debris falls all around you and a monster that looks so much like the ones in the Alien movies is throwing buildings around, the camera moves a lot more, but the whole movie seemed to have been filmed from one of those coin operated beds.
The intro to the movie -- the party -- was about as interesting as watching grass grow. The actors displayed the complexity and emotional range of a paper clip and unsurprisingly gave us characters that were bland, shallow, and pointless. They never became sympathetic and personally, I kept waiting for the real protagonists to show up and finally decided they're probably striking in support of the WGA, along with the people who had been selected to write this movie originally, before the union problems forced the producers to hire a bunch of 9 year old boys.
Woody Allen is a director who can film people sitting around chatting and it's interesting and even fascinating, because his characters are complex and nuanced. The Cloverfield team should've left this kind of thing to the master and instead have come up with some other kind of intro. First rule of writing is, start in the middle of the action and draw people in with that and with sympathetic characters who have something to offer.
The movie wants to be edgy and original, and to do so it shamelessly rips off The Blair Witch Project. Gasp! This is recovered footage! This really happened! Problem with such a gimmick is, it's one of those one time deals. Any recurrences after that and the thing suffers horribly from the relationship between familiarity and contempt. Second problem with this particular gimmick as used in this particular movie is, we all know NYC is still there. With the Blair Witch Project, there was a remote chance that maybe some kids had died in some hick town in Maryland and CNN hadn't covered it, which made the illusion much more realistic and well-crafted. Cloverfield's take on it strikes one as amateurish.
Given that this is a monster movie, one doesn't expect dialog of the caliber found in other types of movies, namely, good ones written by people who know what they're doing. Still, one expects something more than MySpace speak. The tagline for this movie should've been, "OHMIGOD!" That was the phrase heard every few seconds, and after the fifteenth time it became a joke, a kind of ready-made drinking game, and this had the effect of making the monster seem justified in his tantrum.
Hud, the character who films the whole thing, is the best reporter to have ever graced the world of citizen journalism. Most people would've chucked the camera once the situation got really dicey, but not Hud. No sir. He goes on filming no matter what's going on, no matter where the action is taking place. He's like the mailman of journalism: come rain, come blizzards, come giant CGI monsters flinging limbs about, come angry biting beetles and masses of rats, come pandemonium on wheels, the guy points his camcorder and documents the whole thing for posterity. I stayed till the end of the credits but didn't see any mention of a posthumous Pulitzer for the guy. Shame.
Using imagery that's reminiscent of the terrorist attack on NYC is not cool. It's tacky and in poor taste, especially for those of us who were in town that day.
I don't know how much influence J.J. Abrams had on this movie, besides shelling money for it, but the movie feels like most of what he does, shallow and empty, eye candy with no relevance. I'm not a fan of the guy (heretic, I am!) because his work, like this movie, is mostly gimmicks and "wouldn't it be cool" scenes. Wouldn't it be cool if, like, a giant slug monster attacked New York, and, like, some guy filmed it all with a camcorder or a cell phone and then everyone, ohmigod, died and the film was found afterwards?" "Wouldn't it be cool if a plane crashed on a deserted island and there's, like, polar bears, and Others, and a smoke monster?" Between cool scenes, J.J., there ought to be plot, tied together in such a way that it makes sense and is interesting, poignant, and relevant. This is why writing is both an art and a craft.
The staff of ENN (We Are Legend) is anxiously waiting for the next installment of Epic Movie to laugh Cloverfield out of the corps.
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