Time Test: ‘Cloverfield’

Every so often I think of a movie I saw once, years ago, and I wonder if my perception of it would change over time. Because I’ve grown as a person and all. I’m ever so evolved and mature, you see. I saw Cloverfield in the theatre in 2008 and haven’t seen it since, and I was wondering if I would still loathe it with a passion eighteen years later.

Synopsis: Six New Yorkers are extremely perturbed when a giant alien creature, depositing smaller but also deadly alien creatures, shows up in their fair city and promptly destroys the Statue of Liberty and lots and lots of people.

This is one of those found footage movies that is notorious for making people sick. The camera is constantly panning, zooming around in multiple directions. It’s meant to simulate a first-person experience, our cameraman wildly looking around and trying to see everything at once and document it for posterity. But Jesus fuck, skillful technique or not, 80-ish minutes is a very long time for such continuous swishy camera movement. The shots are exceedingly quick, and it’s hard to tell what’s happening. With CGI monsters of course less is more, but even when they aren’t around, it’s hard to distinguish who’s getting blown up and trampled.

I was pretty cranky right from the opening, which features Rob (Michael Stahl-David) skulking around his girlfriend Beth’s (Odette Annable, née Yustman) apartment narrating his every thought and filming her topless without her consent. This is a flashback, and from there we get Rob’s going-away party, where there is boring expositional drama because Rob and Beth have broken up. Rob’s brother Jason (Mike Vogel) and his partner Lily (Jessica Lucas) are trying to make sure everything is filmed at the party, and filming responsiblity is handed over to Hud (T.J. Miller), who’s crushing on Marlena (Lizzy Caplan). Despite my being much more familiar with the cast this go-round and impressed by their horror pedigrees, it doesn’t make the characters more appealing to me; these upper-class narcissists do not hold my attention before the carnage, and after it’s underway, they get only mildly more compelling.

A good deal of the plot has to do with guys pining away for ladies, and frankly I’m much more interested in the monsters than in Hud creepily staring at Marlena or Rob playing knight in shining armor to the profoundly whiny Beth. (Though to be fair I’d be profoundly whiny too if my apartment building fell on me.) The female characters leave a lot to be desired. Lily does little more than scream and cry, though she is pretty hardcore to be traipsing around the wreckage in high heels and then barefoot. Marlena is the most respectable of the bunch, clobbering extraterrestrials (see below–it’s terrifically difficult to get good stills from this movie, but I did my best) and stoically cleaning her nasty wounds with bottled water and cracking jokes–but not in a cheesy action movie one-liner way. The dialogue does come across as very natural.

The special effects and creature design are top-notch. I didn’t find it very scary, but I did admire one scene when they’re in a subway tunnel and behold a sea of rats ominously fleeing from…something. There’re a few moments of suspense while Hud gets the night vision going on the camera, and then, boom!

It’s a prime example of movies in the aughts reflecting fears about 9/11. This scene below in particular highlights that fear plus a theme throughout the film of the modern need to document (Hud continues to cling to Jason’s camera even as he’s endangering his own life): people are taking pictures on their cell phones of the Statue of Liberty head even while more explosions are imminent–it’s not real to them unless they’re experiencing it through a screen.

Overall, on this rewatching I’m feeling snarky but definitely more respectful towards the filmmakers and the hard work they put into the watching experience. I’m glad I revisited it.