Cloverfield (2008)

There have been many a version of giant monster films from the seemingly never ending Godzilla franchise to the most recent iteration of King Kong in Kong: Skull Island coming out in 2017 there just seems to be no end with our fascination of giant killer beasts rising out of the ocean and leveling iconic cities. Despite many great monster films being out for a number of years, I myself have never had an interest in watching any of them because I am not usually interested in these types of films. However when I was told that there was a monster film that was combined with found footage, I had to see for myself if this genre of film could wheel me in. So sit back, grab your camcorder, prep your bunker and let us continue on with this review.

Cloverfield is found footage from a personal camcorder containing segments tapped on the night of Friday the 22nd of May. We follow the heroic crusade of our 4 main protagonists Rob, Lily, Hud and Marlena as they traverse across New York City to rescue Beth, Rob’s ex girlfriend from the crumbling remains of her home. All the while, an enormous beast unlike nothing ever seen before ravages the City, killing millions whichever way it goes. As chaos and pandemonium ensue and the army’s efforts to kill the beast begin to put the lives of the civilians at risk, can our protagonists save Beth and escape the Big Apple with their lives? Well… You know how these types of film usually end…

I myself have never watched the Blair Witch Project, arguably one of the founding films to start the found footage film branch, and I have no plans to watch it for the foreseeable future not because I have ruled it out as a bad film (I would be unjustified to do so unless I watched it), but rather because I feel as if the core aspects of a found footage film are starting to become repetitive. Let’s focus on what I enjoyed about Cloverfield. The thing I have to praise Matt Reeves, J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk and Drew Goddard the most about Cloverfield is how they managed to capture the chaos and the uncertainty that surrounded every moment in the film. Similarly to a real live disaster, people were running for their lives, shops were being looted, the army was coordinating efforts to evacuate the city, it felt like a real life emergency and for some time I truly believed that I was watching a real life recording of ordinary people caught in this mass pandemonium. The effects were amazing and the level of detail that went into turning the Big Apple from a mass populated area into this almost post apocalyptic city makes me sad that we never had long enough to appreciate the time that went into creating it. On a side note however, I am incredibly glad that the writers didn’t just use a replica of Godzilla and actually took the effort to design a new monster, not easy if you think about it.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to what I disliked about the film.The camera work was shaky making it incredibly difficult to see the surroundings in Cloverfield while our characters were on the move. When there was however time dedicated to breaking up the action and suspense, they focussed on some arguably pointless dialogue instead of moments which could have developed our main protagonists both physically and emotionally. While it could be argued that the shaking camera added some realism to the film, what can not be argued for was the dialogue that at most points in the beginning was pointless. I remember a scene around the end of the film where after one of our main cast has just died horrifically, our remaining protagonists shrug it off as a “Yeah I’m Ok”. This is how I felt about our main cast throughout Cloverfield. Due to the long running trope of most if not all the main characters dying in a found footage film, it was incredibly hard for me to become invested in these characters and it sadly got to the point where I no longer cared weather our cast lived or died. From a writer’s standing point this is the worst case scenario, they want us as the audience to become invested in their characters, to feel happiness when something goes their way and sadness if our character fails. The reason why a death in Star Wars or Star Trek affects us more is because we as an audience have grown so accustomed to these people; we’ve seen their little quirks, we’ve celebrated their victories with them and have even seen them at their darkest moments, so when we see them perish it affects us greatly. In Cloverfield however, time is taken away from developing our main casts personalities and instead devoted to pointless dialogue that didn’t go anywhere.

I would recommend Cloverfield to 15 year olds and older as there is understandably a large amount of foul language present in the film. Also, there are one or two scenes in particular which while not on par with the gore seen in a Chainsaw Massacre film, were still some what disturbing nonetheless. Overall I found the idea of a found footage monster film to be interesting but executed poorly. As a monster film I did really enjoy it but as a found footage film, I would say that nothing new has been brought to this branch of film. I may one day try another found footage film though I make no promises on that. On a final note, as of recently I have not been able to post reviews as often as I would have liked but I hope to make a change to that very soon. Thank you for reading and I will be reviewing again very soon. P.S. I hope everyone has a good half term break!