Cloverfield
NYC gets eaten again. Couldn't it have been Vegas? That I'd pay to see.
The key to understanding why today's installment, Cloverfield, is so bad is hidden in the DVD release's special features section. Specifically, the "Making of Cloverfield" short lays it all bare. Go ahead and watch it, I'll wait.
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Okay, you're back. What did you notice about the 'making of' featurette? That's right. The self-congratulatory gushing about how they ad-libbed, how they made L.A. look like New York, how they "broke new ground in filmaking", and especially how they kept EVERYTHING A SECRET. The makers of Cloverfield were so wrapped up in, so enamored of, the way they were making the movie that they totally lost sight of what they were making.
Which, sadly, is comically bad. J.J. Abrams is a good storyteller, or at least is capable of telling compelling stories, and you can catch glimpses of what might have been. One of the painful aspects of this film—one of many—is that there's so, so many ways it could have been unbelievably awesome, hiding beneath the surface. But, being as intoxicated as they were with their own cleverness, the makers of Cloverfield completely botched the operation.
What's wrong here? The inconsistent verite doesn't work when there's a giant monster on the loose. Sure, the effects are spectacular at times, but that doesn't matter when one of the characters is able to place a call, on his cell phone, to his mother while hiding in the subway from the attacking monster. Not one cell phone on the entire eastern seaboard would be worth a tinker's damn in such a scenario, but Rob's magic phone connects like Sammy Sosa with a slowball. This isn't a minor gripe. It's a colossal, magnificent stupidity. So is the video camera with batteries potent enough to power an aircraft carrier.
But that's nothing. It gets so, so much worse. Again, the "making of" short holds the key. In it, Abrams mentions how he went to Japan, and how that got him thinking of Godzilla, and how iconic Godzy is over there, and how he wished "we" had "something like that". Umm, okay. Fair enough: Godzilla is iconic, and making an iconic monster is a worthwhile pursuit, I'll grant. But J.J., come on. Godzilla is iconic because Godzilla movies are about Godzilla. Godzilla movies aren't about immediately unlikeable Gen-Y crybabies. Godzilla movies are all about bringin' the noise and fucking up Tokyo. (Well, and also irritating, precocious children, but nothing's perfect.) Cloverfield's monster might be totally cool, but you don't see enough of it, ever, to really know. The footage of it is doled out in a miserly fashion, except in one staggeringly stupid sequence toward the end.
In between the nauseating shaky-cam hysterics, there's a lot of surprisingly tedious interaction between various non-entity characters. Actually "characters" is the wrong word, since there's no point in these people existing, let alone being featured in a movie. They're just there, alternatively panicking and staring blankly into space. Granted, the film makes a stab at providing a human element, and subsequent tension, by following some guy named Rob as he tries to find some chick he once banged amidst the chaos, but I guarantee you won't give a shit. You won't like Rob or his idiot brother or his idiot friend. You won't remember their female companions because they don't say or do anything remotely interesting, and you sure as hell won't care what happens to them, provided it happens quickly.
What were they thinking? Seriously, why did anyone think, even for a moment, that audiences would identify with this troupe of assclowns? I've been searching high and low for an answer, but I'll admit, I'm completely stumped. If I didn't know better, I'd think that Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, that satanic duo, had written this. No, on second thought, as bad as their characters are, they're at least fleshed out to the "stereotype" or "parody" level. Rob and Co. here... hell, they could have just propped up cardboard cutouts of Abercrombie and Fitch models in front of a greenscreen. Add some ADR of alternating shrieking and mumbling, throw in a few explosions, and you're set. Cloverfield 2: The Apocalypse coming soon to the bargain-bin at T.J. Maxx.