Cloverfield

I did not get sick at Cloverfield.

This is surprising, because I have gotten sick 1. on a ferry crossing the placidly calm East river, 2. in an indoor pool, 3. during my third viewing of The Bourne Ultimatum, and 4. during church (which isn't even moving at all).

The film is meant to seem like it was shot entirely through a home-video camera, an illusion attempted by jerky movements and blurry zooming, but successful only in producing audience members retching from vertigo or laughing in disbelief. Surely, real amateur cameramen could have framed a shot much better and far steadier, without sacrificing any realism or immediacy?

Although I guess the characters were all supposed to be annoyingly rich yuppies, hours away from a much-needed caffeine-fix in a latteless Godzilla-ravaged New York, so that probably explains the shakiness well enough.

Anyway, I avoided getting sick by unfocusing and just letting the film do its thing; incidentally, this strategy is also necessary for enjoying Cloverfield's plot. Rob is going to Japan, and so his friends have thrown him a raging all-night party in his 100,000 sq. ft. Financial District apartment. There's some misplaced humor, some loud music to fill out the soundtrack CD, some whining about a girl, and then the lights go out. The rest of the film plays out in pretty much exactly the same order as the trailer, but only about twice as long.

A Monster has attacked Manhattan, toppling buildings, shedding scary spidery things, and generally leaving a swath of destruction in its wake. It also impressively chucked the Statue of Liberty's head towards the camera from an impossible uptown direction. Now Rob must both risk his life and defy the laws of physics by walking from Spring Street to 59th Street (in 10-12 minutes), directly into the Monster's path, to rescue his ex-girlfriend Beth.

There is a lot that director Matt Reeves got right. The snippets of TV news, the eerily 9/11-reminiscent building destruction, pandemonium on the streets, and onlookers snapping cellphone camera pics of all of the above: these scenes strike as resoundingly honest as such scenes could. The whole homemade, first-person POV aspect, while sometimes sickening and always annoying, is still pretty cool, as is the "US Government Property -- Classified Tape" bookend.

Nonetheless, the Monster is pretty disappointing, even borderline forgettable. Its spidery offspring do make people's heads explode I guess, which is always neat. Although exactly where this thing comes from is never explained (space? the posters claim "Something Has Found Us"), JJ Abrams has posted a lot of fake sites to the intarweb to spread origin-story gossip. I refuse to look at any of it, because I prefer to remain blissfully unaware of all but one possible source: the egg in Madison Square Garden that Matthew Broderick didn't destroy. Give this theory a try, it's quite satisfying.

That's really what I found most unbelievable about Cloverfield: no one ever mentions that this thing looks a lot like Godzilla. That'd be the first thing I'd say. Well, after, "No, I'm not going to walk the subway tracks," and, "Screw this low-flying helicopter evacuation crap, I'm taking the PATH to Jersey."

Final verdict: ultimately unsatisfying, but undeniably cool.

P.S. But come on, "Cloverfield?"
Even IMDB's "Untitled JJ Abrams Project -- 1/19/08" was better.