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Cloverfield
Jan. 18th, 2008 02:33 amThe short one:
If you like monster movies, as in the old school monster-destroying-a-city movies, go see Cloverfield. It's great fun and you won't be sorry you did!
The long one:
I think a lot of what made this film was J.J. Abrams' marketing genius. I don't know about Alias, but I've been with JJA through Lost, so I know how he likes to play games to seriously vitalize and deepen the experience of film.
For the past six months, interested parties have been given a wealth of cryptic background information on Cloverfield (pretty much all of which you can read back through by visiting Cloverfield Clues). We were introduced to the characters, their MySpace pages, given random teaser promo photos, mangas, Slusho commercials, even private video blogs of a girl to her boyfriend who'd been working for a mysterious company in Japan. We've learned about Slusho, a company related to the film, distributing a drink that contains "seabed nectar" as its secret ingredient. (Slusho! You can't drink just six.) We've learned about the company behind Slusho, Tagruato, and their mining corporation and even more information about that.
And still, with all this off-screen story unfolding before the release of the film, still we were able to go in and have a pristine monster movie experience.
Although the entire film is actually told through handicam footage, I found it to be superior in quality to that featured in The Blair Witch Project. I had heard that you don't get to see the monster that much because of the way in which the narrative unfolds (i.e. by people who aren't exactly going to stand around and videotape a damn monster coming for them), but I found that to be pleasantly untrue: yes, the people reacted properly to the monster's presence, but the monster still got a lot of screen time for all that. ( Maybe a slight spoiler... )
This film was pure fluff: great fun, an enjoyable monster flick, but lacking in any emotional or psychological meat. I think my enjoyment was heightened by the intellectual stimulation of knowing (or, rather, partially knowing) a lot of back story going in. It let me theorize about many things on screen that I would have been completely clueless about otherwise.
The handicam method of storytelling worked very well, although some of the scenes were a bit nauseating when there was a lot of running. However, due to the introduction of the film "evidence" and the nature of the "home footage" itself, the audience was left feeling very separated from the events of the story. It was very clearly happening to someone else, like a news story that has no bearing on you personally. You weren't right there with the characters, man, you weren't with them in all their terror and loss and humanity. (Like I said above: enjoyable and thrilling, just no emotional meat.)
The dialogue was also pretty good, as was the characterization, but I felt the film really could have benefited from the word "fuck." ( Spoilery example of why I feel this... ) That would just be my natural reaction.
Half-kidding aside, there were some genuinely great lines that I would quote but they would not be nearly as great out of context.
My one big complaint about the film would be the date thing. ALL of the internet-hype, the behind-the-scenes storytelling, the teaser images, EVERYTHING has been dated 1-18-08. And then they went and had the date-stamp on the camera be May 22nd and May 23rd. This wasn't the internal clock on the camera being off: the main character confirms the date on-screen at one point. It's really a minor point, but it just seems incredibly sloppy.
I hope that the brilliant marketing campaign will continue and interesting background information on the monster, what it is, where it came from, Tagruato (the mysterious company), and Slusho (their product; you can't drink just six!) will continue to emerge. I'm fascinated by the story and the experience they've built here.
The DVD is going to be amazing. (Extras FTW!)
I need to have an HD player of some sort by then.
P.S. We totally just walked into the theatre without presenting our tickets again tonight. They didn't start taking tickets at the door until after we'd already gone into the screen and gotten our seats. I went back out to have my ticket torn to get the promotional item, which happens to be a Kodak disposable camera. I was mildly disappointed, but I'm not saying no to free film! But couldn't we have had some Slusho promotional items? Some cups or something?
P.P.S. After presenting us with something that takes pictures, knowing we were about to watch a hyped movie with a super-secret monster, they were very serious about warning us that any opened camera would be confiscated and anyone engaging in flash photography would be thrown out.
P.P.P.S. They don't realize that some enterprising soul already caught the Cloverfield monster on their cel phone and has been spreading it around the Internet at least since yesterday.
P.P.P.P.S. Still sick. Glad I took that three hour nap earlier and stayed quiet until movie time. Equally glad I didn't have to stand in the cold outside and that the movie involved merely sitting down.
If you like monster movies, as in the old school monster-destroying-a-city movies, go see Cloverfield. It's great fun and you won't be sorry you did!
The long one:
I think a lot of what made this film was J.J. Abrams' marketing genius. I don't know about Alias, but I've been with JJA through Lost, so I know how he likes to play games to seriously vitalize and deepen the experience of film.
For the past six months, interested parties have been given a wealth of cryptic background information on Cloverfield (pretty much all of which you can read back through by visiting Cloverfield Clues). We were introduced to the characters, their MySpace pages, given random teaser promo photos, mangas, Slusho commercials, even private video blogs of a girl to her boyfriend who'd been working for a mysterious company in Japan. We've learned about Slusho, a company related to the film, distributing a drink that contains "seabed nectar" as its secret ingredient. (Slusho! You can't drink just six.) We've learned about the company behind Slusho, Tagruato, and their mining corporation and even more information about that.
And still, with all this off-screen story unfolding before the release of the film, still we were able to go in and have a pristine monster movie experience.
Although the entire film is actually told through handicam footage, I found it to be superior in quality to that featured in The Blair Witch Project. I had heard that you don't get to see the monster that much because of the way in which the narrative unfolds (i.e. by people who aren't exactly going to stand around and videotape a damn monster coming for them), but I found that to be pleasantly untrue: yes, the people reacted properly to the monster's presence, but the monster still got a lot of screen time for all that. ( Maybe a slight spoiler... )
This film was pure fluff: great fun, an enjoyable monster flick, but lacking in any emotional or psychological meat. I think my enjoyment was heightened by the intellectual stimulation of knowing (or, rather, partially knowing) a lot of back story going in. It let me theorize about many things on screen that I would have been completely clueless about otherwise.
The handicam method of storytelling worked very well, although some of the scenes were a bit nauseating when there was a lot of running. However, due to the introduction of the film "evidence" and the nature of the "home footage" itself, the audience was left feeling very separated from the events of the story. It was very clearly happening to someone else, like a news story that has no bearing on you personally. You weren't right there with the characters, man, you weren't with them in all their terror and loss and humanity. (Like I said above: enjoyable and thrilling, just no emotional meat.)
The dialogue was also pretty good, as was the characterization, but I felt the film really could have benefited from the word "fuck." ( Spoilery example of why I feel this... ) That would just be my natural reaction.
Half-kidding aside, there were some genuinely great lines that I would quote but they would not be nearly as great out of context.
My one big complaint about the film would be the date thing. ALL of the internet-hype, the behind-the-scenes storytelling, the teaser images, EVERYTHING has been dated 1-18-08. And then they went and had the date-stamp on the camera be May 22nd and May 23rd. This wasn't the internal clock on the camera being off: the main character confirms the date on-screen at one point. It's really a minor point, but it just seems incredibly sloppy.
I hope that the brilliant marketing campaign will continue and interesting background information on the monster, what it is, where it came from, Tagruato (the mysterious company), and Slusho (their product; you can't drink just six!) will continue to emerge. I'm fascinated by the story and the experience they've built here.
The DVD is going to be amazing. (Extras FTW!)
I need to have an HD player of some sort by then.
P.S. We totally just walked into the theatre without presenting our tickets again tonight. They didn't start taking tickets at the door until after we'd already gone into the screen and gotten our seats. I went back out to have my ticket torn to get the promotional item, which happens to be a Kodak disposable camera. I was mildly disappointed, but I'm not saying no to free film! But couldn't we have had some Slusho promotional items? Some cups or something?
P.P.S. After presenting us with something that takes pictures, knowing we were about to watch a hyped movie with a super-secret monster, they were very serious about warning us that any opened camera would be confiscated and anyone engaging in flash photography would be thrown out.
P.P.P.S. They don't realize that some enterprising soul already caught the Cloverfield monster on their cel phone and has been spreading it around the Internet at least since yesterday.
P.P.P.P.S. Still sick. Glad I took that three hour nap earlier and stayed quiet until movie time. Equally glad I didn't have to stand in the cold outside and that the movie involved merely sitting down.