OMG, What Is That Thing?

Right. So, this weekend, with some degree of trepidation, my wife and I sat down to watch "Cloverfield." Trepidation, because, well, "LOST" doesn't really do it for me. The trailers were cool, but that's their whole purpose, so, I take them with a grain of salt.

Now, I will begin by saying that I can understand why Cloverfield didn't do as well in theaters as they'd hoped; if you followed the marketing at all, or watched the first 60 seconds of the movie, you know exactly how it's going to end.

I will say secondly that I feel profanity has a proper time and place; often it's overused in movies. I would have to say, though, that when a horrifying (and it is) and unexplained (and so it remains) monster rises up out of the ocean and begins demolishing New York, that might be an appropriate time for it; I'm fairly sure I would have sworn a whole lot more than the characters did, and that change - for me - would have added to the already magnificent authenticity the filmmakers built into the film. They could have gone for the R, instead of settling for PG, and for me it made it just a tiny bit less of an experience.

That said, and all hyperbole from critics aside, this movie is solidly in my top ten favorite monster movies of all time. Other than the language, it feels tight, authentic, and a couple of times scary as hell.

Wisely, the screenwriter opted to leave the monster a total mystery; no hints whatsoever are given as to the origins or purpose of the creature, other than the obvious "it's really pissed off." No dreary expository sequences here, but again, this is authentic; Joe Schmoe - or in this case, the movie's narrator, videographer, and main character, Hud - wouldn't KNOW what the monster was, until some kind of maybe-months-down-the-road press release; he'd be, just like in the film, too concerned with staying alive and getting evacuated.

Unusually, the military fares quite well in this movie; not in a weaponry sense - one soldier openly tells Hud "whatever it is, it's winning," which isn't very reassuring - but in the sense that the screenwriter understood something of America's perceptive dichotomy quite well. See, in the movies, Hollywood typically portrays the military as either a vast cabal of crazed warmongers, or a stumbling collection of jackasses; whichever they feel like this week. The popular perception of the actual servicemembers, however, is quite different, and the screenwriter used this to add even more authenticity to the film, by simply portraying the soldiers doing the things soldiers are actually trained to do; that takes one layer of expected Hollywoodism out of the film from the get-go, and it works wonders. There's one fantastic scene where the monster is charged by a platoon or so of foot soldiers, rifles blazing, trying desperately to draw its attention away from the civilians who are cowering in doorways and behind cars long enough for the civilians to escape; at that moment, you really, really buy this movie completely.

I will also say that - in this single, specific instance - I applaud the use of the "shaky-cam" to portray events; I will say it again, that it simply sells the movie. The authentic feel of everything in the film is what makes it convincing. This technique has been used, thus far, in only three movies I've actually enjoyed: 84Charlie MoPic, the Blair Witch Project, and... Cloverfield. It makes this film immediate, blisteringly convincing, and just outright sells you the story, the characters, the movie, from top to bottom. As I said before, this movie resides firmly in my list of the ten best monster movies ever made.

For your edification, the other nine are, in no particular order, The Host; The Howling; King Kong (the original;) Gojira (the original, unexpurgated film;) The Thing; Them!; The Fly (Cronenberg's version;) the original, uncut version of Mothra, and An American Werewolf In London. So, take that for what it's worth.