image © Paramount Pictures
Although much will be made of the hype machine that brought this film to the consciousness – a masterful trailer with an iconic scene of the decapitated Statue of Liberty’s head thundering down a New York street – there was a sneaking suspicion that they had over-egged the pudding somewhat in recent weeks with its viral marketing campaign.
The genius of this film is that, instead of being detached from the action like so many Hollywood monster movies of the past, you are thrust into it with a group of normal people, experiencing events as they experience them, finding out what has happened through what they see, be it snatches of television news, conversations or the terrifying sights.
image © Paramount Pictures
It is the emotional journey of the group that underpins the action, moments when the film is stopped allow the viewer to watch the touching scenes of romance that were on the ‘tape’ beforehand, both keeping true to the concept of a recovered film from the disaster zone and adding another level of emotional involvement with the cast.
The cast, it should be pointed out, are a bunch of relative unknowns, something that helps keep the gritty realism – and the entire ensemble does a simply brilliant job of portraying normal people faced with an incredible situation.
Of course there are still moments that stretch credibility, not least the resilience (both emotional and physical) of the main protagonists, and the need for them to keep filming when their lives are in imminent danger; but this is a film that is deserves the suspension of disbelief – working hard for it and resisting the temptation to spoon feed the audience with exposition that never truly arrives.
Like any monster movie, the truly critical moments lie in revealing the threat; and the entire style of the film helps this enormously. Because the main characters are constantly on the run the information and glimpses are served up in bite sized nuggets, starting with a glimpse of the behemoth walking between tower blocks.
This is, in itself, a masterstroke. Even the most sophisticated CGI in the world cannot conjure up the fears of something unknown, and by not showing its hand to early, this film keeps the tension as tight as a guitar string.
The handheld style will inevitably draw comparisons with the Blair Witch Project, but this is a very different beast – not least in terms of budget. Disasters on this scale are difficult to bring off, but by not screaming at the audience to admire the backdrop, Cloverfield’s obviously expensive special effects set the scene rather than steal it.
Cloverfield gives very little in the way of answers; it concentrates on telling a very small story in a very large disaster but it also supplies a healthy dose of laughs – sustaining the audience through the early party scenes before the world crumbles around them, but maintaining it through gallows humour as the main camera man ‘documents’ the goings on.
Some may find the handheld shots disorienting at times, and perhaps the non-stop action and thumping sounds of a city being destroyed may overwhelm some, but by resisting the temptation to break away from its one camera concept, this film takes a brave route, but it is one that is justified by the end product – a simply sublime monster movie.
A groundbreaking disaster movie - ignore the nay-sayers...
