Monster trash, monster smash

The release posters for Cloverfield show a headless Statue of Liberty set against the backdrop of an actively smoking Manhattan skyline, which is in the process of darkening. Also, there’s an ominous trail through the water that leads into the city. Did I mention the Statue of Liberty has lost her fucking head?

With such, er, melodramatic promotional material, you’d expect the plot to be something similarly sensational, and you’d be right. A bunch of Manhattan-ites are celebrating at a going-away party when a skyscraper-sized monster randomly comes out of the sea and starts to seriously fuck up New York’s shit. As they make their getaway, the going-away boy gets a call from the love of his life who’s stuck in her apartment 70 blocks uptown, and the four of them valiantly set off through the battle zone on a rescue mission, braving crumbling buildings and mini-monsters on the way.

Weird thing is, Cloverfield is much less sensational in the theater than it is on paper. The main reason for this is also the flick’s most distinctive feature: It’s shot entirely in a “mock handheld” format. We see almost everything from the viewpoint of Hud, one of the protagonists who is ineptly filming the party when the monster hits, and brazenly keeps the camera running throughout the drama. The movie’s production values zealously stick to this concept.

While this makes the movie interesting to watch in a lot of ways, it’s also done in a fashion that dulls the excitement a little bit. No-name actors, the absence of music, and stripped-down dialogue lacking any flash or stylization work against any sense of fright or intensity. This kind of filming sensibility worked wonders in United 93, and for a very obvious reason: The subject matter was deadly serious and deadly real. Cloverfield is about a giant sea creature destroying New York. As such, emotional scenes fall flat and intense scenes feel strangely detached. It doesn’t help that the characters are mostly depicted as your average Jane’s and Joe’s, with nothing really interesting or notable about them.

The PG-13 rating stunts the film’s intensity as well, with moderated bursts of profanity and violence that end up reminding us that in a real situation, there’d be a lot more there that we’re not seeing.

However, Cloverfield is no dud of a movie: it works at the same time that it doesn’t. There’s an attention to detail here made possible only through its format, like deserted dinner plates from sidewalk cafes that make it into a third of the screen for a split-second shot, or snatches of bystanders pulling out their camera phones for pictures as their first reaction to seeing the severed head of the Statue of Liberty. The treatment that director Mike Reeves (of Felicity fame) gives us of an abandoned and violent New York is undeniably enjoyable to look at.

The main redeeming factor for Cloverfield is Hud, the faithful cameraman with a lack of wit and incessant yap, and the only character I found myself ever caring about. Late in the movie, the rescuers are attempting to climb over to the top of a building that has smashed into the side of another. Before he starts climbing, Hud turns the camera onto himself for a brief second and says with a straight face, “My name is Hudson Platt. If this is the last thing you see, then…uh…I died.”

In an earlier scene, while one of the characters is fiercely studying a subway map, Hud sidles over and says, in all earnest, “Uh, Rob, I really don’t think the trains are running, man…” The format of the movie strips his dialogue of any campiness or black humor that would be unbearably present in more conventional films, and instead offers something more unsettling and real.

Cloverfield‘s fascinating in that it doesn’t really fulfill the demands of its story, but is entertaining nonetheless. I’m not sure I’d see it again, but at 90 minutes long, there are sure as hell a lot of worse ways to spend an evening.