1/18/2008

Avoid "Cloverfield"

I just finished watching "Cloverfield" at the theater, and I'm furious. That's money and an hour and a half of my life that I will never get back. I think that this may be the worst movie that I ever paid full price to see (knocking "The Crow" off the the perch it occupied for 14 years).

The worst part of the movie is the cinematography. It is shot in documentary style from the POV of some guy holding a video camera, and as a result there are numerous stretches where it is nearly impossible to tell what is going on. Worse, the camera "shakes" constantly, making it very hard to watch. I almost never get motion sickness, and I got a bad case of it from watching "Cloverfield." Whoever thought that this would be a good idea could not have been more mistaken.

Even if the movie had employed more conventional cinematography, however, it wouldn't have helped because the movie has no plot whatsoever. People have frequently slammed the 1998 Matthew Broderick version of "Godzilla," but at least there was some sort of a storyline to the movie. You knew why the monster existed in the first place. You at least sort of cared about the human characters. None of this can be said for "Cloverfield." There is no connection between viewer and character, meaning that you really don't care what happens (and, from the way the movie opens, you know from the first five seconds that everyone dies, so I don't consider that a spoiler).

All through the movie, I kept telling myself, "Maybe the monster will look cool when they finally show a good shot of it." Wrong. It takes until the last few minutes to get a glimpse that lasts more than a couple of seconds, and then it's a major disappointment...just like the movie itself.
Whatever you do, don't throw your time and money away on this garbage.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've never been a fan of that type of cinematography (sp?), so thanks for warning!

Anonymous said...

Current nicknames on the Blogosphere:

"The Blair Kaiju Project"

"Code Name: Dramamine"

The idea of doing a Kaiju flick "Blair Witch style", as if it were filmed POV by some of the anonymous crowds who normally get munched, was a decent one. Basically a variant of Disaster Movie.

Unfortunately, Cloverfield's Edgy (TM) camera work is actually causing motion sickness in its audiences.

And the ending is basically "He Dies, She Dies, Everybody Dies, Am I Not EDGY?"

Back in the Eighties there was this pop song called "Centerfield". Has anyone considered filking it as "Cloverfield"?