CLOVERFIELD
First things first. "Cloverfield" is a shitty title for a giant monster movie but I suppose it's ties in with all the hype and secrecy about the movie by not being descriptive. Maybe Abrams and company thought a mysterious title would allow them to avoid being dismissed as just a giant monster film that would be deemed "cheesey" by hipster audiences. And the same may be true for the movie's structure of being a amateur video found by the military. But I definitely think there was a fear in the producers that audiences might not buy a simple giant monster attack film that wasn't cloaked in irony and a send up of the so-called cheesey old movies. If you look at the pilot of Abrams' "LOST", I think you can clearly see that he had a giant monster idea in him he wanted to get out. What became the smoke monster sure seemed like a jungle stomping creature more along the lines of CLOVERFIELD than a bunch of smoke early on. But he would have had to commit to that and there would be a risk of being laughed at for a number of reasons so he played it safe and saved it for CLOVERFIELD. Sort of. There still is the lack of commitment to just make a giant monster flick. A twenty something dork is moving to Japan for business so his friends throw him a party. A girl he likes and has had sex with shows up with another guy. They argue , she leaves, monster attacks and he goes to find her. We see all this through his video camera operated by a retarded friend. Okay, the Dept. Of Defense finds the video and shows it to us after the monster attack. As if we haven't suffered enough they leave all the party footage on the video and make us watch it. Did they have some high level meeting where this decision was made. "God damnit Major! Leave that party footage on there. Can't you see it sets the tone and Dumbass really loves whatever her name is? That's an order." There are glimpses of the creature as our boy and his completely idiotic friends trek across the city. I liked the one idiot girl saying that the monster was eating people but I sure would liked to have seen that too. There's a fair amount of the old BLAIR WITCH dizzy cam and a lot of walking. It's really hard to give a shit about this guy because he's an idiot continually putting other idiots at risk. I suppose having the story be about a young group was a marketing decision, maybe so that the girlfriends of guys who were dragged to the theater weren't too bored. I kept thinking how much cooler it could've been if the film followed a group of soldiers instead of the kids. They even could've kept the found video idea. It's not like they gained believability with the video gimmick either. There's no camera malfunctions, battery problems, or even just the fact that the idiot never puts the camera down. I would've smashed that fucking camera to get dumbass to help out. He's not even a good camera man. He misses a lot of monster shots instead filming guys shooting at the monster. The scene in the subway with the little monsters attacking was along the lines of MIMIC with maybe a bit of ALIENS. A couple of the scenes even reminded me of the video camera footage from the American GODZILLA, especially when the camera is shooting up at the monster. The monster design was pretty cool from what I could tell but it didn't seem to have much personality. It basically lurches around but we never see it do too much. It's not the type of design that sticks with you, it just vaguely reminds me of other post-Giger stuff. I just can't imagine how any giant monster fan was really satisfied with CLOVERFIELD, there's just not enough there. Is any body really gonna buy it and watch the whole thing? Or will they just watch the few minutes of monster footage? And was there anything special about that video that the Army would've have needed? The whole fucking seemed to be on cable news so surely somebody somewhere got some better monster footage. Good luck with the sequel guys.