Cloverfield
I first heard about Cloverfield whilst sitting with my girlfriend in Pizza Hutt and when I read it described as “a Godzilla style monster movie” I damn near pissed my pants with glee. The prospect of a giant monster movie featuring a Godzilla-like monster remorselessly destroying New York was enough to make me desperate to see the movie, especially since the last giant monster movie was Peter Jackson’s King Kong which, although good, certainly had it’s share of flaws.
But this looked to be something quite different. Rather than beating us over the head with a “feel sorry for the monster” message, this looked to be something more in line with stuff like the original Godzilla or Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms in that it starred an entirley remorseless monster doing what monsters do best – stomp the shit out of cities.
Filmed entirely in that Blair Witch/shaky handheld camcorder style, Cloverfield can be frustrating viewing at times, with thing often happening tantalisingly off-camera; our intrpid cameraman seems to have a knack of swinging round just in time to see something large and pissed off stomp behind a building denying us a really good look at the monster – but for an afficianado of monster movies this style was something of a treat. In these kinds of movies we’re more often than not stuck with naught but square jawed army generals and impossibly handsome scientists for company; the only “normal” people we see are glimpsed fleetingly fleeting in terror or being trampled underfoot. It’s nice, therefore, to see a giant monster movie from the perspective of the average joes, the people stuck at ground zero rather than the people in the ivory tower.
Speaking of not seeing the monster, when we do get a decent look at the monster (pictured above) it’s a bit of a let down, looking like a cross between a spider and the Rancor from Return of the Jedi. It’s certainly not going to become an icon as Godzilla and King Kong have become, and pretty much proves the Jaws rule of what you don’t see being scarier than what you do see.
A couple of paragraphs back I mentioned the words ground zero and I chose those words carefully. There was a lot of talk (read: nonsense) at the time Cloverfield was released that certain scenes were remenisent of the attacks on 9/11, and yes, I guess that if you want to look at it that way, then certain moments in the film were similar, but they were equally similar to scenes in Gorgo, Destroy All Monsters, Gamera vs. Barugon or any number of similar movies.
Cloverfield isn’t a movie you can watch over and over. It takes an age to get going, and when it finally does it can be frustrating viewing, but there’s much to enjoy – especially for a fan of the genre. Overall, it’s worth a watch – two, in fact, to see if you pick up all the shit you missed first time around.
