Review – Cloverfield
- Ethan Cole

Highlights: Detractors:
  • Antlion’s attack
  • Annoying assholes biting the dust
  • Annoying
  • Lack of real tension
  • Gimicky

The DoD recovered a tape of some jerkoff with a camera who evidently documented the monster attack and other stuff, and they were kind enough to release it theatrically for us all to enjoy.

Going into this movie, I expected to hate it.  I hated the trailer, and as for the way it was marketed; I find crusted semen frosting on desiccated four day old road kill far more interesting. 

A quick rundown of why I didn’t buy into the hype and excitement preceding the movie:

Opening up, already I see the bullshit.  Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but come-the-fuck-on Hollywood… after Die Hard [Faux] 4.0, and Transformers world's most believable hackers, you'd think this kind of tech shit would no longer be glossed over…

The first screen shows the DoD identifier card, As if to give some context or some excuse for the 'enhanced' image quality we're watching.  Guess again assholes.  We’re left to assume the tape was dumped to an SD card, since with disk-media you don’t “record over footage”, it’s more than evident it was shot on tape as indicated by Rob – referring to the tape having material on it.  In effect the question could be asked why would the footage be dumped to an SD card ? But this is the government… so it could be plausible.

This isn't nitpicking on technical details, since Cannibal Holocaust and Blair Witch made sense in this aspect, given they were shot on film.  Hell, I’ve given them the benefit of the doubt through suspension of disbeli -… logic-leap that they’re shooting LP to get 90mins, in which case they would also be getting dropped frames.  But there’s a limit to artistic license ey? The inserts of the previously recorded material - at least dawn of the dead had decency to include nudity.  As for their presence, their placement is convenient yet logical, appearing when the tape is being adjusted.

The technical inconsistencies are even more apparent when it’s supposed to be 2009 (some folks had to look into this, have fun) as standard definition cams are practically obsolete already.  Not just from a sales standpoint, but most of them have shitty tape bays – good luck recording with that.  In addition to this, what kind of consumer camera can record dialog this clearly; up to being able to capture the audio off the other end of a mobile phone, there’s some incredible impedance on this uber-mic, being able to rapidly adjust levels… at fair distances even… it’s quite the camera, this consumer camera, sure is impressive that it can record that well and clearly at night with limited grain, that’s a joke.  This is Hollywood technology at its best.  Leave your brains simmering in a forgotten pot somewhere folks, because none of the viewers use cameras

As for the cinematography it didn’t pan out as bad as I expected, but it’s still bullshit; being too clean and ‘right time, right place’.  In a sense it's well staged, hiding the fact that it's not really an amateur by way of using imitated amateurish camera angles and handheld so far as it's not "finding-the-shot" so much as constantly landing the shots needed.  As a result it doesn’t come off pretentious, but rather too damn convenient.  Not to mention, it's also too stable for a camera that light, and in the hands of an initially reluctant but increasingly determined yet total n00b.  At least with Diary of the Dead the cameras are in the hands of film students (assuming they’re competent).

On the plus side though, there’s no GUI on the screen, which is excellent – that bullshit half-assed cheap trick to show that it’s a handycam consumer camera would have been ridiculous – and no, I wouldn’t put it past Hollywood to shoot a whole movie with that up there and have something hidden within the drop-frames and time codes so the wide-open-cock-treat-hungry audiences would eat up this mystery-cum-greater-scheme and be astounded at it’s depth.  But that’s something that maybe limited to TV now, which is still viewed by the public as the lesser of the two formats… but fuck them, they're a herd of delusional shit-for-brains-sheep.

But since we're going down that route everything makes sense, when you take into account the nickname of the main camera guy: Hud.  Given the Superhero reference (who the fuck doesn’t know who Superman is? I’ve had conversations with taxi-drivers on speed who knew who Superman is…) a hint of his superhero-like twitch camerawork able to capture just the right amount of detail in frame, often times, while on the run.  He doesn’t miss.  He is: The Videographer [spoiler] infact the monster agrees with this, deciding to give him an emblem across his chest [/spoiler] - with some shots bearing unusually good composition for n00b.  Even some film-students cant get that kind of composition right.  The skill and strength of The Videographer is in full effect, as he’s wading through a sea of people (which looks good by the way) with his mighty build and arms like metal girders he’s able to get shots of exactly what we the audience need to see.  But even he is no match for the environmental forces which can knock him over let alone almighty wrath of The Monster.  From a shooting perspective – the actual camera being an HDD model would probably break someone’s arm or fracture a rib – no one wants a lawsuit…

As for a positive note, the first excruciating 20 minutes are like a home video; really annoying.  Not being one who's all that familiar with home-movie recordings… so I can only attest to its sickening atmosphere.  In effect, it's hard to give a shit about any of the characters (unless maybe you’re like a lot of these characters – which I’m sure some of you are) and I look forward to their deaths... unfortunately this is a PG13 movie - so no Saw or Hostel here... and no tits... But when the time came for them to die it was great.

Adding more to the disbelief is the conveniently compressed time-frame – in pure movie terms comes some attempt at character development.  Here we have some seemingly-coked-out-broad who has a character moment, in which she and Hud exchange some dialog; therein establishing a quick bond (not a bad TV trick), so in effect the audience will feel [spoiler] connected – thereby making her eventual predictable death all the more painful, and all you pussies in the audience can feel bad when she does.  As for myself, it made her death all the funnier, when she burst into bits I erupted into laughter and nearly split my seams doing so. [/spoiler]What would have really happened in “real life” is Hud would be perving out on her the whole time, possibly even seeing if the night-vision would penetrate her white-top.

As far as the realism goes, the sound takes a degree of adjustment – unless you’re not thinking actually thinking about it.  The sound is “movie” sound, not a home camera sound – which is a good thing from an entertainment perspective.  However this staged-realism does rear its ugly head in terms of cheap reveals – such as when they first enter the medical room that's really loud and chaotic, but they only hear it on camera when they go in… impressive how only a few quarantine tent sheets can shield sound in that manner. 

From a sound perspective it does raise the question how the tension could have been raised if they went the route of Paul Greengrass.  Possibly having the speakers crackling and audio muffling with the sounds are over the capped levels… this would just piss people off… What’s here is fine… and it’s in that realm of staged-reality, especially towards the latter stages of the film the sound design is good in conveying the chaos and the growls of the monster.

Tech aside, the Monster and Antlion creatures are actually amusing - just a shame we don’t get to see much of it.  The visual effects are pretty good for the most part but there’s nothing too memorable, given there's no real tension in this movie as such... unless you feel for these characters or are totally immersed in this world.  The Antlion orgy though is fun - or rather... funny.  Mainly because they're pretty cool and these annoying characters might actually die as a result of them.  However… the reveals are annoyingly cheap, particularly when discovering the features of the "super advanced camera" - all that's missing was an over cranked sound effect to jolt the audience, complete with typical stables of walking in fucking darkness like a bunch of retards – let alone, no concern for the third rail…

There are actually times throughout this, where I would rather watch Resident Evil again... which one was dependent on how intolerable the movie would get.  Turns out, it got to the point where I'd watch RE3 again - but then it got better (and I also had enough time to remember that RE3 is a piece of shit… with no merits) so upgraded to where I'd watch RE2 (Jill not withstanding) - RE3 can go fuck itself.

Essentially this can be described as mainstream experimental cinema (with emphasis on the mainstream part) despite the whole POV thing being a gimmick, that at times is rather dull – but edited in such a way it never really drags – so in that respect there’s balance of entertainment and so called realism.  If this were to be a true documented experience unedited it would probably be more unwatchable than most of the youtube videos combined… (ok… maybe not that bad – fuck you and your AMV assholes).  No doubt we’ll see Military-grade Helmet-cams used in the sequel – time to rip off or pay homage to FPS’, that’ll get the gaming crowd wet…

Since the viewing of the movie I was informed of some of the viral junk that preceded it, such as the back story of the drunken chick on the couch (no she's wasn’t a stripper).  To some extent I almost expect something like:

As a child Dr. Gruato was a fan of Gojira, it was then that he garnered an interest in DNA technology - in that time he also grew a strong affinity along with his children in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  During a holiday trip to Hawaii; his family noted a change in him as if something was wrong.  He was never quite the same man and his children grew distant from him.  Upon returning to Japan, he suffered a mild cardiac infarction and eventually died en route to the hospital.  It was rumored that his dying words were "cowabunga... doesn’t say it all"

Recommended For:

Rating: 6.0/10
Cumjackulation Rating: 8.9/10
(ratings explained)