Cloverfield (2008)

There was a lot of hype about this film, then a lot of anti-hype about it. The New York Times trashed it. It seemed a big budget Blair Witch Project. For the high and low expectations, the movie was good.

True the idea of an indestructible monster roaming the city is nothing new, but it was not really about the monster. You barely see it, and when you do it is like so unimpressive. The monster is lame. Luckily, the movie is not about watching some monster destroy buildings across Manhattan. It is also not some “Matrix” like action film.

OK, so thats what Cloverfield is not. What it is, is fear.

It feels like they must have interviewed 9/11 survivors and taken news footage to make the film. Being a 9/11 survivor myself, I can honestly say, that this movie has been the only thing I have ever seen that I can say “ Yeah, it was like that!” It got a lot right. The details of things being left right there they were a second before the chaos; the papers, random papers, everywhere, and the people running in panic looked and felt just like the real event. From when the disaster begins, it is 9/11 all over again. It was the sense of being in the middle of the storm, and not knowing what was going on, dealing with scared people, while controlling your own fear that was brilliant. Like 9/11, it starts in lower Manhattan and with people trying to escape north and through the Brooklyn Bridge.

After the 9/11 parallels it goes through the New York City blackout that occurred a couple of years later. People in the film were traveling through the New York City subway systems on foot. It combines both events.

The movie seems very realistic because in some ways it really is. You feel happy to see the monster because there is a sign that this is all fake. The viewer is not scared of the monster, the viewer is scared of being in a situation where they are trapped, and they don’t know what is going on.

The camera is moving so much, that you feel a little sick and disorientated. The characters are as simple, baseless, and as superficial as you can imagine. It is easy not to really care about them. However, I can understand why this is, in a way, because with such a dramatic plot-orientated movie, the audience doesn’t have the emotional capacity to handle much else.

Cloverfield is short, and once things get going they don’t stop till the end. It goes by pretty quickly. There will probably be a sequel.

Cloverfield probably does merit the hype of being realistic, because it is. It is made from the terror of the New York City disasters.

The movie is totally worth it.