Cloverfield

Dir: Matt Reeves

2008

***

Drew Goddard's Cloverfield is a logical progression in the 'monster movie' genre but it doesn't really cover new ideas, only new techniques. The movie monsters of the 1950's were all metaphors for something much bigger such as the cold war and communism and Godzilla, the biggest monster of them all, is famously really all about fear of the atomic bomb, following the events at Hiroshima. It was producer J. J. Abram who came up with the original concept after visiting Japan. He saw lots of Godzilla toys and declared to others at his production company that America needed their own monster that wasn't the cute and cuddly King Kong. He was quoted as saying "We wanted something that was just insane and intense". After passing an old Escape from New York poster he also stated that he wanted the Statue of Liberty's severed head somewhere in the movie and the idea went from there. I've said it before but I believe J. J. Abram is the biggest creative fraud working in Hollywood today. However, Cloverfield tapped into something quite interesting and very much of the era. The found footage horror sub-genre was inspired by the rise of YouTube, mobile phone technology and the popularity of TV news. The vast amounts of 9/11 footage the world watched was clearly an influence but without wanting to give credit where I don't think it is due, this film does tap into the West's post-9/11 paranoia.  The style of filming, nicknamed shaky-cam, was relatively new at the time and certainly hadn't been used in a mainstream action movie before 2008. It was met with mixed reviews, while it worked as a 'found footage' piece it did get tired quite quickly and those who were prone to motion sickness had a tough time of it. The viral marketing of the film was key to its success, applaudable at the time but less so now that nearly every action/horror has tried the same technique ever since. The build-up was pretty effective, it was intense and quite exciting, it just went downhill fast once the monster was finally revealed. Somewhere between Blair Witch and Godzilla, Cloverfield really isn't that original, and the fact that it played on very real paranoia following 9/11 left a bit of a sour taste in the mouth. The marketing was very clever but it made the film rather soulless. Each character even had their own MySpace profile, meaning they cheapened cinema and spoiled social media for everyone at the same time. It was a little bit like being sold a cheap used car, we the customer were bamboozled and we convinced ourselves that this was the one we'd been waiting for but we probably should have known better. In fairness, it gives us everything it promised and we did take a test drive so more fool us for buying into it. Credit due though, I don't love it but it does have clever elements and the found footage genre hasn't seen much better since.