Directed by: Matt Reeves
Starring: Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, TJ Miller, Michael Stahl-David, Mike Vogel, Odette Yustman
Classification: 15
Hyped as one of the most secretive films of recent years, Cloverfield explodes out of a gate held open by Lost producer JJ Abrams. Told solely using the point of view of a handheld camera, Cloverfield purports to be the footage left behind by a group of twenty-somethings stuck on Manhattan Island when a giant monster attacks New York. The premise really is that simple.
The plot is barely sketched in to provide a motivation for someone to be filming such an event - Rob (Michael Stahl-David) is leaving the US to take a job in Japan, and his best friend Hud (TJ Miller) is filming testimonials from his friends at his leaving bash. During the party, thrown by his brother Jason (Mike Vogel) and Jason's girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas), the monster attacks, decapitating the Statue of Liberty and wreaking havoc as it pulls down skyscrapers and demolishes entire streets. However, this is a Hollywood flick, so naturally the group can't just leave. Rob is determined to go back into the city to rescue the love of his life, Beth (Odette Yustman), and soon the not-so-merry band are running through subways, creeping through abandoned shopping malls and crawling through ruined buildings.
There isn't much more to it than that, but there doesn't really need to be any more to it. It's one of the more mainstream attempts at a survival horror, and comes off like a borderline sci-fi thriller for the Myspace generation. Clearly a cinematic effort to excise the feelings created by the 9/11 atrocities (in much the same way that Japan used the Godzilla films to work through their anxieties caused by the atom bomb), Cloverfield is also a very good film. Some people have unfairly compared Cloverfield to The Blair Witch Project for its use of hand-held filming, but in this current age of digital film and decent video cameras available in mobile phone handsets, Cloverfield is by far the more successful example.
The character design on the monster itself isn't brilliant, but it's better than it has been in other recent films, and the occasionally slightly ropey CG is neatly balanced by the shaky camerawork. The dialogue feels reasonably genuine, and while you might inwardly lambast Rob for putting himself and his friends in danger simply to rescue the woman he loves, at the same time you can recognise the heroic gesture behind the stupidity, a gesture no doubt born of an over-saturation by the happy endings rife within pop culture. Neatly balancing an air of suspense missing from most survival horror films, Cloverfield has an air of plausibility and tangibility, no doubt thanks to its handheld camerawork. There is a peculiar air of claustrophobia about the film, trapped as we are within Hud's point of view, forced to look only where he looks. Naturally this works to draw the audience into the film, denying us the omnipotent view usually afforded by the camera in other survival horror movies (for example, we often see the monster or killer creeping up on our plucky hero before they realise what's happening), and leaving us at the mercy of the same dangers threatening our group.
As a result, Cloverfield is a tense thriller, big budget monster movie and well-paced survival horror all rolled into one package - and it's a package I highly recommend to anyone looking to be entertained and possibly scared at the same time.
5/5