A Pinoy Blog About Nothing

The Internet hype surrounding the release of Cloverfield wasn’t as ubiquitous nor as annoying as Snakes on the Plane. But there is the hype with the teaser trailer strategically placed with the Transformers movie, various faux websites and endless speculation first with the title and then the monster. Was it another Godzilla movie? The American remake of the Korean monster-movie Host? The marketers of Cloverfield however perhaps informed by the backlash from the Snakes on the Plane buzz, decided not to engage with the Internet buzz and instead chose to keep feeding it and see what sticks.

But hype does not make a movie. After the initial rush of people who couldn’t wait to see it, would it spread via good word of mouth? Cloverfield delivers does deliver on the visual thrills, even doing one better than the last American Godzilla movie by making an interesting and mysterious monster. However, it stops from being a true ‘instant cinema classic’ by shallow characters which were hard to cheer and root for or for even to care about them. I was waiting for them to get stomped, munched or crushed by the monster to get it over with. It’s definitely Godzilla/Blair Witch for the youtube generation. Spoilers below.

As in any disaster or monster movies, you have the human cast in which to view the destruction. Often, they’re flawed characters who find redemption through the extraordinary events they find themselves in. In Cloverfield we start out with a group of friends attending the going-away party of Rob, the main dude in this story. Rob has been promoted to vice-president of his company and is being sent to Japan. Rob has a friend named Beth which he has apparently slept with recently and of which he has a strained relationship. Both are friends of Lily, who is the girlfriend of Jason, Rob’s brother. During the party, they asked Rob’s best friend Hud to take video testimonials of their guests. One of the guests is Marlena who Hud has the hots for. It is through Hud’s camera point of view where we as the audience witness the whole monster attack of lower/mid-Manhattan. The most interesting characters are Marlena and Hud and I wish they focused more on these two than the rest of beautiful people.

Taking a page from “found” video angle of The Blair Witch Project, we track these yuppies from the party to the ill-advised rescue of Beth across town. While visually, it is light-years from Blair Witch it seeks to capture the feeling of being there complete with shaky shots of the floor and the feet. If you’re prone to epileptic attacks or get sea-sick, avoid this movie.

But that’s okay. The jerky camera movies occasionally, magically become steady enough to let us see the destruction of Manhattan and give us occasional glimpse of the monster. Unlike Godzilla which was also set in New York, the monster remains tantalizingly obscure until the final moments where we see it in full, terrifying beauty. The effects are definitely top-notch on Cloverfield and it doesn’t go over the top with the CG.

However, while it doesn’t go nuts with the effects, it doesn’t necessarily pay much attention to the story. It’s just about Rob getting to Beth across town with friends in tow. In fact Rob is single-minded in getting across town that his brother’s death barely registers.

There were a few infuriating points in the movie which prevented me from totally making that suspension of disbelief or care about the fates of the characters (Jason, in fact, correctly points out that Rob is a ‘douchebag’ and from little of what I saw, I have to agree). The following are my “Dude, wtf?” moments:

• If Rob was smart enough to be a VP being sent to Japan, why the hell would he try the elevators of a building that is near collapse? Any schoolkid would know not to be in elevators during fires, earthquakes or monster attacks.
• If Rob was smart enough to be a VP being sent to Japan, why the hell would you pull out a body (albeit a very nice body) that has been skewered by a steel rod? Wouldn’t that make her, you know, bleed to death? Considering they found her unconscious, it would’ve been better to cut the rod and take it with her.
• If there were three of you, one of which is injured and the helicopter can only take one passenger, would you, like, make the injured person board first?
• If rats were running one way, should you really be looking at the opposite direction?
• If you find yourselves in a military triage, shouldn’t you at least tell someone that your friend was bitten and kinda just bleeding out her eyes a bit before you go ranting about getting cross town to your kinda-girlfriend?
• Shouldn’t that Statue of Liberty head be a lot bigger? Don’t people walk around its crown at one point?
• In the Cloverfield world, cellphones can reach tunnels despite cell sites probably being destroyed above ground.
• In the Cloverfield world, handheld videocams will have battery power of several hours despite being on standby and using the built-in light and nighvision capabilities.

My main complaint really are the weak characterizations. Rob is hardly a sympathetic character. I couldn’t care less what he’ll do or what happens to him. Hud and his awkward attempts at befriending Marlena was a far more interesting dynamic than Rob and Beth or of Lily and Jason. Unfortunately Hud and Marlena are just pawns in Rob’s ‘hero arc’.

The ending is much of a surprise but definitely left open-ended for a possible sequel. There were a lot of questions unanswered but frankly, there are no particular reason to care about those answers. Watch this one on the big screen, and choose a seat way at the back. It’s one of those movies which you’ll probably tolerate to watch just once. There was one scene when the head of the Statue of Liberty lands in the middle of the street and the people who witnesses to it, pull out their cameraphones and digital cameras to record it. Here, even death and destruction is just content for the electronic media. But then again I’m over 30 and this is the Godzilla for the youtube generation.