Feb 26 2009
Cloverfield to Battlefield???
There is a certain genre of movies where even before you go to watch one of them you already know what to expect. Like when the movie is named ‘Godzilla’ it confirms the fact that it surely isn’t a comedy, or when the movie is named ‘Snakes on a Plane’ and it has Samuel L Jackson in it you know the dude is acting in it for the money, cause the real heroes would be the snakes, and then you have a movie like ‘King Kong’ where CGI creates the kind of magic where King Kong performs as well as Adrien Brody probably even better, now that is unexpected, of course it comes at a price . One thing is common in each of these movies though; the promos and the name both paint a picture in the viewers mind even before the actual viewing, so when I heard the name ‘Cloverfield’ I didn’t think much about it. Just heard that it’s a great movie, but didn’t hear anymore, and you can’t imagine how glad I am that I incidentally did not know anything else about the movie, and that the title didn’t give away anything at all.
One could say that the basic premise used to convey the movie to the viewer is similar to a movie like ‘The Blair Witch Project’, but that is where the similarity ends and thankfully so.
The movie begins with this guy Rob recording his girlfriend Beth in an apartment in New York, cut to the present where his brother Jason is recording his girlfriend shopping and preparing for a surprise going away party for Rob who has secured a great job in Japan.
In the party Jason gives the camera to his friend Hud (Hudson), asking him to record the proceedings in detail, Hud obliges and gets to work, by this time I seriously started to feel it’s a yuppie film about love and relationships, where you see that Jason has by now broken up with his girlfriend Beth and she has come to the party with another guy, and how Jason still loves her etcetera etcetera, and I was starting to feel surprised as to how this movie managed to become such a hit?? Then all of sudden as all of this is happening we hear this thundering noise, the people at the party run to the terrace where they see a huge explosion near the harbor, the best part about the whole concept is that we only know as much about what is going on as the characters in the movie, there is no background or explanations given.
The next thing that happens got my pulse racing, we see the head of ‘The Statue of Liberty ‘flying in the air and landing in the middle of a road where our small group of people are now standing, in the meanwhile they see something huge approaching them through a cluster of collapsing building ahead of them, at this point the focus shifts to a group of five, including Hud, Rob, Jason his girlfriend Lily and a girl called Marlena who Hud has the hots for.
They decide to escape through the Brooklyn Bridge; the group approaches the bridge, with droves of other people just like them trying to escape. While walking with the crowd four from the group get left behind , while Jason oblivious to the fact keeps moving ahead, by the time Jason realizes this it’s too late, we see only a glimpse of the creature destroying the Brooklyn bridge, killing Jason along with a lot of other people.
The remaining four run back into the city, on the way we see Rob make up his mind to save his ex-girlfriend Beth, who has left a message on his phone, saying she is in trouble. The four decide to stick together and help Beth, and thus begins a cat and mouse game between a monster destroying a city and four people trying to save a girl who lives in one of the many blocks the monster is destroying. All this while Hud has captured every moment that happened, on camera, hence the picture sometimes gets shaky or blurry, giving the whole proceeding quite a realistic feel.
The only thing one might find weird and pretty unrealistic is the kind of abuse the camera takes and still keeps running, not to mention the fact that its battery life seems to be infinite given the time span the movie covers.
This is the kind of monster movie ,that can to quite an extent be labeled as scary, that is because it feels real as if in a documentary and also because you don’t get to see the monster all at once, hence the element of anticipation coupled with an element of surprise makes this movie work beautifully.
I personally believe if we can’t see something completely, or don’t know where it’s come from, then the impending sense of danger is heightened, along with the level of intrigue.
My personal recommendation is for you to surely watch this movie; it’s the best in this genre and surprisingly even the performances in the movie aren’t half bad. This despite the fact that there aren’t any known faces.
My rating 8 monsters out of 10
