What if?
This is the question that famed author Stephen King asks to spark the ideas for his stories. What if an author was kidnapped by his most devoted fan? What if pets came back from the dead? What if a virus developed by the military got loose and killed 99.9% of the Earth’s population?
What if?
Cloverfield asks this question too, maybe as well as any Stephen King novel ever did. Although King had nothing to do with the creation of this film or its story (it is from the mind of up-and-coming J.J. Abrams, creator of Alias and Lost), Cloverfield is definitely from the same neighborhood that King’s creative mind lives in.
What if a giant creature attacked Manhattan? What if you were there? What if you had a video camera?
There’s a word for what Cloverfield is, and that word is creative. It’s also derivative, but derivative film has never been done this well. It is not that we haven’t seen this sort of thing before; we have, just not like this. We’ve seen giant monsters before (Godzilla) we’ve seen hand-held cameras used to tell a story (Blair Witch Project) and we’ve seen humans running in terror (28 Days Later). But we’ve never seen it done quite this way, or quite this well.
The camera isn’t just a means to view the events in Cloverfield. It is a character in the film all to itself. It is the one constant in the chaos from beginning to end. It is also possibly the best use of a video camera prop in any film to date.
Yes, this does have a drawback: The camera shakes. This is very much a home video of human beings dealing with an unbelievable, terrifying disaster that their minds can barely comprehend. And that means shaky camera shots: flashes of people running, darkness, feet, legs, rubble – everything you might expect from people who are pumped full of fear, adrenaline and shock as they run for their lives.
But unlike the intentionally shaky camera in the recent Bourne films, this works. It works because director Matt Reeves knows when to give us a big, juicy bite of the action; he knows when to give us the payoff. He has an uncanny sense of just how long to withhold the obvious camera angle from the audience while he builds the yearning, and then he knows exactly when to give them just what they’re craving.
Cloverfield is not a deep story. It doesn’t have time. There are no convoluted plots, amazing heroics or slapstick comedy. It is very much an answer to the question of “what if?” Abrams and Reeves don’t waste time with story elements that don’t fit. Instead, they ask the question “What if a monster attacked Manhattan and you were there to witness it with a video camera?”
And then they answer it. And boy, is it a great answer.
Pay special attention to the very last scene – watch the ocean very carefully…
htedrom says:
what if… a number of tried and true movie conventions were combined in a boring, unimaginative way to appease a facebook generation attracted by gimmicky tricks over acting, random thrills over plot or story?
what if… a movie’s single claim to fame was that it took the biggest of its gimmicks from the blair witch project, one of the worst films of all time?
what if… TRULY original and enjoyable monster flicks, like The Host, were swallowed by the box office returns of this derivative kitsch?
what if this movie had really asked what if, and come up with even one of its own ideas, or at least presented an old idea in a new or creative way… or for gods sake hired actors and bothered writing a script, instead of copping for poor CGI effects that could only thrill when kept out of focus on a camcorder
March 5, 2008, 8:39 pm