All That Hype... For This?
I just got home from seeing Cloverfield a little while ago, and I'm really not sure how I feel about it. I guess when you hold it up against all the hype that's been building up for it since July, the word I'd be looking for is "underwhelmed."
There's some really good parts and some parts that could have been better, but thanks to the silly Blair Witch gimmick that the movie's been saddled with, it all ends up being a big jumbled mess. The gimmick only really helps to better the movie in a handful of sequences (the walk through the subway tunnel and the final ten or fifteen seconds, for example), and to tell you the truth, the movie really didn't need the gimmick. Cloverfield would have worked just as good - maybe even better - had it been made as a normal movie.
It doesn't help anything that the movie takes a while to really get rolling, and that the character that's running the camcorder for the whole movie is an annoying pain in the neck that seems like he couldn't hold the camera straight if his life depended on it. But what really grinds my gears about Cloverfield is the amazing lack of screen time for the monster. They only really bother to show the monster two or three times, and you never get a sense for how truly monstrous it is because its entire amount of screen time throughout the entire movie totals to about maybe thirty seconds. Yeah, I know J.J. Abrams is all about mystery, which is why Lost hasn't answered a single question in however long it's been on. But when I go to see a monster movie, I'm expecting to see a monster. It would be like watching a Godzilla movie, only to have Godzilla hiding behind skyscrapers for the entire thing while he was being videotaped by somebody with Parkinson's. I guess with the gimmick and the way the story was being told, they couldn't really give the monster a whole lot of time to shine. But I don't want to have to watch the DVD in slow-motion in order to know what the heck the monster looked like.
I'm sure my opinion of the movie will sway toward one side or the other when I've had the chance to watch the DVD come April or May, but all I can really say right now is "meh." The concept behind Cloverfield is novel, and actually lends itself to adding to the movie's suspense in a few scenes. But I guess I went in with expectations that were way too high, because I was expecting a little something more. So I guess I'll give it a big ol' thumbs in the middle with three and a half stars. Maybe if they make Cloverfield 2, they'll go back to the typical movie-making process. Ooh, idea! Maybe they could do the sequel with another gimmick, telling the story with local news coverage. It'd be kinda like the extra feature that's on the DVD of the Dawn of the Dead remake. It might be better as a short film, but it could be neat.
And to pose a question to those of you readers who've seen it, wouldn't a Cloverfield video game be awesome?
There's some really good parts and some parts that could have been better, but thanks to the silly Blair Witch gimmick that the movie's been saddled with, it all ends up being a big jumbled mess. The gimmick only really helps to better the movie in a handful of sequences (the walk through the subway tunnel and the final ten or fifteen seconds, for example), and to tell you the truth, the movie really didn't need the gimmick. Cloverfield would have worked just as good - maybe even better - had it been made as a normal movie.
It doesn't help anything that the movie takes a while to really get rolling, and that the character that's running the camcorder for the whole movie is an annoying pain in the neck that seems like he couldn't hold the camera straight if his life depended on it. But what really grinds my gears about Cloverfield is the amazing lack of screen time for the monster. They only really bother to show the monster two or three times, and you never get a sense for how truly monstrous it is because its entire amount of screen time throughout the entire movie totals to about maybe thirty seconds. Yeah, I know J.J. Abrams is all about mystery, which is why Lost hasn't answered a single question in however long it's been on. But when I go to see a monster movie, I'm expecting to see a monster. It would be like watching a Godzilla movie, only to have Godzilla hiding behind skyscrapers for the entire thing while he was being videotaped by somebody with Parkinson's. I guess with the gimmick and the way the story was being told, they couldn't really give the monster a whole lot of time to shine. But I don't want to have to watch the DVD in slow-motion in order to know what the heck the monster looked like.
I'm sure my opinion of the movie will sway toward one side or the other when I've had the chance to watch the DVD come April or May, but all I can really say right now is "meh." The concept behind Cloverfield is novel, and actually lends itself to adding to the movie's suspense in a few scenes. But I guess I went in with expectations that were way too high, because I was expecting a little something more. So I guess I'll give it a big ol' thumbs in the middle with three and a half stars. Maybe if they make Cloverfield 2, they'll go back to the typical movie-making process. Ooh, idea! Maybe they could do the sequel with another gimmick, telling the story with local news coverage. It'd be kinda like the extra feature that's on the DVD of the Dawn of the Dead remake. It might be better as a short film, but it could be neat.
And to pose a question to those of you readers who've seen it, wouldn't a Cloverfield video game be awesome?
posted by Matt Sutton at
8:34 PM
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