Recently my wife brought home a DVD. It was video from her childhood that converted to digital. Shot when she was a young girl at the end of the 70s it was clearly the work of untrained videographers. There were tons of them them. The shots flew wildly from side to side. It gave me whiplash.
That's kind of how I felt while watching Cloverfield, the new film produced by J.J. Abrams, the man who brought us the Lost TV show, MI3, and the upcoming updated Star Trek.
Like many, I blogged what I thought was a phenomenal ad campaign begun with a brilliantly mysterious trailer that ran at the beginning of Transformers. The fact that that film was a titanic bore helped make the trailer look even better (and it looked pretty good to begin with).
Now the movie's out there. And as you might have expected it's a mixed bag.
Starting as home video shot mostly by a guy named Rob (Michael Stahl-David) of what appears to be his girlfriend Beth(Odette Yustman). Then it becomes video footage of a going away party for Rob who is leaving for Japan. Most are probably familiar with the essentials of the story after that, but if not...spoiler alert.
Some interpersonal drama is introduced in the form of the state of Rob and Beth's relationship, or lack of one. Shortly into the part there are loud explosions and lights go out temporarily at which time everyone on to the roof to see what is happening. And the view from there is one of Manhattan under some sort of attack.
The group scatters except for Rob, his brother Jason (Mike Vogel) and his fiancee Jessica (Lily Ford) , a girl named Marlena and Rob's obnoxious best friend Hud who was tagged to video the party. Now he's videotaping the whole destruction of Manhattan.
And that in a nutshell is the conceit of Cloverfield - it's the Blair Witch Godzilla. A retelling of the Godzilla story through a handy-cam held by one of the characters.
And its a great idea. When it works its super. The action is much more immediate through the lens of a personal DV, rendering many action sequences with much greater impact than if they had been shot conventionally. And in many ways you can relate to the characters in a way you wouldn't otherwise.
The action sequences are great. The conceit of the handy-cam allows the director to reveal the invading monster gradually, in pieces, which creates much more anticipation and energy. Some emotional shots take place while the camera is on the ground seeing away from the action generating much more power.
But though the idea is great, alas the film is not. The herky jerky camera movement is enough to make run for a bottle of Dramamine. If this doesn't give you motion sickness at some point, nothing will.
And the monster, once we do get to see it, has no resonance as anything but a destructing machine. There is no political or socio-logical underpinning, and not enough close shots of it, to attach any kind of emotion to it. Its just a big thing that kills, which is scary but not in the way the Alien creature, or Jaws, or Osama bin Laden, or even the original Godzilla, are scary. It's just a dumb monster.
And in the end, this is just a dumb movie. The obvious future sequel preparations are in place so you know there will be more. Maybe that will give them time to come up with a real script and some real characters.
The gimmick is a good one. It's just too bad they stopped at gimmick rather than making it a complete movie. While there are some truly frightening moments in Cloverfield, mostly near the beginning, its more like a viral video than a feature film. But maybe that's enough these days.
Hollywood religions are getting more scrutiny, and dat ain't good for the congregations. Scientology can't seem to figure out that harrassing people who dis it is the fastest way to get tons more negative publicity (evidence T. Cruise - more on that later), and it looks like there's a little brouhaha in the mystic Jewish land known as Kaballah.
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