The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Baking the Big Apple

Today Nick and I caught an early showing of the new monster flick, Cloverfield. Short reaction: It works. I won't rush right into spoiler material -- I'll warn you and put in a spacer before that.

The fears going into the movie were that we were going to see a monster movie handled using the worst elements of The Blair Witch Project. Sure, we have the shakycam approach, as it's told via a videotape that, immediately prior to the shit hitting the fan, was documenting a going away party. Yes, there are moments when you'll wish the guy holding the camera would look left or look right instead of where he is. Yes, you'll find yourself marveling at the incredible battery and features this particular camera has. Still, it's done well.

Will some suspension of disbelief be necessary? Of course. Will the entire story be laid out for the viewer, so that they know where the threat originated? No, but I appreciate that they don't dumb everything down and wrap it all up in a bow. If you're sensitive about seeing a city ravaged, especially New York, and seeing buildings crumble and fall, then this won't fall into the "entertainment" category for you. Once the havoc begins, a scene quickly comes up where, from street level, people are seeing a building collapse and a cloud of debris smoke rushes down the street in a way that's entirely too familiar since the 9/11 coverage.

The movie's only an hour and twenty four minutes long, which was something I was concerned about going in, especially as I knew an early chunk of the film would be pre-disaster. As it turned out, the movie was nicely packed and fairly well paced.

The performances are generally solid. They cast reasonably experienced actors, most of whom have mainly worked on television. Depending on what one watches there may be some familiar faces, but it was definitely a good move to avoid making this a vehicle for an established big screen star.

Now I'll start to hit some other elements now that will fall into the Spoiler category. Soooo, if you're going to go see it, click out of here now. (But don't forget to come back after you've seen it!)


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Okay.

One of the good things about this not using some big star in a central role is that no one is safe, and by the end of the movie we see that that's the truth. Certainly, given that the film opens with the videotape being labeled as U.S. Government property with a "Do Not Copy" directive lets anyone in the audience who's thinking know that one or more elements of the incident are being suppressed, and make it seem likely that the people we're seeing didn't come out the other end intact... but there's enough vagueness to leave it open for speculation during the film.

I was very pleased to see that the decision wasn't made to simply make this a sort of man in the street/worm's eye view version of Godzilla. Oh, sure, there's some of that there, but having the plague of smaller creatures, (complete with elements of Alien for those paying attention), which helped hugely to round matters out.

Do I want to see a wave of similar projects? No. Would I mind a sequel done by the same creators? Probably not. If it wasn't just an attempt to cash in on an earlier success -- if they felt it was worth doing -- I'd give it a try.