Cloverfield (2008)

Monster movies have always been a seminal part of film history and in 2008 that history was reinvented with the film Cloverfield.  Cloverfield was directed by Matt Reeves and written by Drew Goddard.  The film which stars Mike Vogel, Lizzie Caplan, Jessica Lucas,  T.J. Miller, Michael-Stahl David, and Odette Annabelle.  The film is shot as if every event is being filmed using a video camera.  The action takes place in New York City where Rob (Michael Stahl-David) is preparing to move from New York for a new job in Japan.  Rob’s brother Jason (Mike Vogel) plans a surprise leaving party for Rob with the help of his girlfriend Lilly (Jessica Lucas).  When we see footage of the party Rob has an argument with Elizabeth (Odette Annabelle).  After Beth leaves the party the city suffers a power outage and the entire group of friends has to flee the area and find safety while every area of New York is being destroyed around them.

Cloverfield is a wildly inventive and tense experience.  I personally think the movie does a lot of things right in terms of making the audience feel like they’re in the film and along for the ride as this group of friends works exceedingly hard to survive being attacked by an unknown threat.  The actors at the time of this film’s release were all unknowns to general audiences and as far as their acting is concerned it is mostly reactionary.  The one person that I can give credit to for elevating the material they were given is T.J. Miller.  Miller’s comedic asides as HUD that occur while the city is being attacked are consistently and in many ways unintentionally funny.  There really is no drama about whether these people will make it out alive you know either they will or they won’t and so much is going on that I don’t think people will care.

The major negative of this film is that the dialogue is cringe worthy.  Every time a character speaks other than HUD I just want to cringe.  None of what they say sounds realistic for the situation they are in despite the fear on the groups faces being genuine.  The relationships between people in the group all feel forced and I never felt like any of these people would ever waste their time associating with each other.  The conversations the group has are basically things that occurred in the past that the audience never saw happen or the crazy thing that just happened.  Neither of those topics do anything to bond us to this group of people because we either just experienced that or it wasn’t shown to us to begin with.

Cloverfield works mainly because the marketing team behind the movie was very good at telling audiences absolutely nothing and letting the images and chaos that unfolds speak for itself.  Going into the movie that tense suspense and mystery carries its weight throughout the entire film.  Even though I don’t like many of the characters the way the story is presented makes the whole experience a modestly enjoyable one.

Cloverfield had a ton of potential that was correctly used to make things intense and suspenseful.  The only thing the director forgot is to make the characters’ people we would want to survive and on that point the film woefully falls flat.  Cloverfield is great fun but that’s all it is a monster of a movie that’s manages to engage and nothing more.