final verdict for: "Cloverfield" (2008): J.J. Abrams should be in prison for this thing.
A movie that does a lot of things right, but does just as many if not more, wrong. The story is as old as filmmaking itself. A giant monster attacks New York. We've all seen it a thousand times before. However this movie lacks unlikely hero-figures that have the brilliant idea, that blows the monster to pieces. It has pointless heroicism however.
Let's begin with the actors. The choice was really good and the main cast plays their role absolutely convincingly and comprehensable, so there must have gone a good deal of the planning time into character development. The side characters play little to no role in the movie itself, but had a huge role in the viral marketing campaign that went along with the movie (though, it's getting OLD Mr Abrams!), but we'll come to that later.
The camera. Shaky cam. If you read these reviews regularly, you probably know I am not a big fan of the shakey cam. I have to say though, that the use of the camera itself is pretty good! However, the cuts are ridiculous, nobody who knows anything about camera hardware will buy the cuts with a tape recorder to be like this. Also, the filter of the camera is just too good, so that's unrealistic as well. A flashlight of that power on a handycam? Nah! Same goes for nightvision of that quality. Go fool someone else.
The pace of the movie, on the other hand, is really good and you watch the horror unfold in awe without a single moment to really catch your breath.
Thankfully there is no music, so at least that stays realistic.
Behold, here come my issues with the movie. It is set in New York. Okay that has been done before, but Abrams uses a stylistic device that filled me with shame for him. In the very first scenes when the monster attacks New York and buildings crumble, Abrams shamelessly recycled arrangements from 9/11 footage. Settings, angles, progressions, it was all a copy of those events and it would be okay if the use of the lessons lerned in those days (in terms of how crumbling buildings would look realistically) had been more subtle, I would have been okay with it, but the that pictures from 9/11 are shamelessly replicated here, just fills me with disgust.
The next thing is the anti-japanese sentiment. You don't find that by watching the movie, but if you follow the viral marketing campaign that was started around the movie to provide background information, you find it. First it seems to be a friendly nod to the "Godzilla" movies, but the more you read the worse it gets, as it views the japanese as a brutal profitseeking people that will go any way to make profit and are ultimately responsible for the attack on New York as they accidentally awaken the monster, searching for substances on the sea-floor and then watch the catastrophe unfold without helping.
The viral marketing campaign itself however is really clever and sucks you deeper and depper into the cloverfield mystery that is even today, 3.5 years after the movie not completely solved and leaves space for sequels.
The end of the movie was also very bold, I will not spoil it for you, but you will be surprised no matter what.
As I said in the beginning, the movie is neither good nor bad, as it confronts the audience with a lot of bold decisions in terms of plot and storytelling. However, the shameless exploitation of traumatic pictures that are reminiscent of real life events and negative sentiments that date back to the 1940's leave you with a very bad taste in your mouth.
Final verdict? Guilty on all accounts. The movie is sentenced to a score of 4 out of 10.
The court is hereby dismissed!
A movie that does a lot of things right, but does just as many if not more, wrong. The story is as old as filmmaking itself. A giant monster attacks New York. We've all seen it a thousand times before. However this movie lacks unlikely hero-figures that have the brilliant idea, that blows the monster to pieces. It has pointless heroicism however.
Let's begin with the actors. The choice was really good and the main cast plays their role absolutely convincingly and comprehensable, so there must have gone a good deal of the planning time into character development. The side characters play little to no role in the movie itself, but had a huge role in the viral marketing campaign that went along with the movie (though, it's getting OLD Mr Abrams!), but we'll come to that later.
The camera. Shaky cam. If you read these reviews regularly, you probably know I am not a big fan of the shakey cam. I have to say though, that the use of the camera itself is pretty good! However, the cuts are ridiculous, nobody who knows anything about camera hardware will buy the cuts with a tape recorder to be like this. Also, the filter of the camera is just too good, so that's unrealistic as well. A flashlight of that power on a handycam? Nah! Same goes for nightvision of that quality. Go fool someone else.
The pace of the movie, on the other hand, is really good and you watch the horror unfold in awe without a single moment to really catch your breath.
Thankfully there is no music, so at least that stays realistic.
Behold, here come my issues with the movie. It is set in New York. Okay that has been done before, but Abrams uses a stylistic device that filled me with shame for him. In the very first scenes when the monster attacks New York and buildings crumble, Abrams shamelessly recycled arrangements from 9/11 footage. Settings, angles, progressions, it was all a copy of those events and it would be okay if the use of the lessons lerned in those days (in terms of how crumbling buildings would look realistically) had been more subtle, I would have been okay with it, but the that pictures from 9/11 are shamelessly replicated here, just fills me with disgust.
The next thing is the anti-japanese sentiment. You don't find that by watching the movie, but if you follow the viral marketing campaign that was started around the movie to provide background information, you find it. First it seems to be a friendly nod to the "Godzilla" movies, but the more you read the worse it gets, as it views the japanese as a brutal profitseeking people that will go any way to make profit and are ultimately responsible for the attack on New York as they accidentally awaken the monster, searching for substances on the sea-floor and then watch the catastrophe unfold without helping.
The viral marketing campaign itself however is really clever and sucks you deeper and depper into the cloverfield mystery that is even today, 3.5 years after the movie not completely solved and leaves space for sequels.
The end of the movie was also very bold, I will not spoil it for you, but you will be surprised no matter what.
As I said in the beginning, the movie is neither good nor bad, as it confronts the audience with a lot of bold decisions in terms of plot and storytelling. However, the shameless exploitation of traumatic pictures that are reminiscent of real life events and negative sentiments that date back to the 1940's leave you with a very bad taste in your mouth.
Final verdict? Guilty on all accounts. The movie is sentenced to a score of 4 out of 10.
The court is hereby dismissed!
