Directed by Matt Reeves

Written by Drew Goddard

Starring: Michael Stahl-David, T.J. Miller, Jessica Lucas, Odette Yustman, Lizzy Caplan, Mike Vogel

Distributed by Paramount Pictures

Film is released in the U.K. on Jan 18th, 2008.

Review by Oliver Pfeiffer

The metaphorical monster has always been an effective tool to communicate various political/environment upheavals that have hit home around the world. The Japanese Godzilla (or Gojira) movies in the 50s surfaced as a profound result of the threatening power of nuclear energy. Jaws twenty years later bite its way through an attempted cover up that mirrored the Watergate scandal of the 70s. Now Cloverfield is here to unleash a fearsome creature in New York whose so hell bent on mass destruction that you feel al-Qaeda must be pulling the CGI strings. Effectively mirroring post 9/11 sensibilities and insecurities, Cloverfield rather audaciously uses shaky hand-held recording - that similarly captured the majority of the literally earth-shatteringly events of that infamous day - to lend an extra dimensional of believability and actuality to proceedings.

The film commences, a la The Blair Witch Project with the title announcement that we are about to witness ‘found footage’ that was located at the site that used to be Central Park. And indeed from the get-go we find ourselves, for better or for worse, restricted to the events that are captured from the voyeur (aka cameraman Hud) behind the video camera. For at least 15 minutes this involves the rather tedious prospect of viewing a group of young, good-looking, albeit rather annoying, New Yorkers getting drunk and canoodling at a leaving party in an apartment building, and serves to both introduce the main five characters we will follow and manipulatively lull the audience into a false sense of security and pretence, in order to provide a greater sense of surprise when the first attack arrives. For the trained cinefile though this opportunity will arrive at an obvious moment in the narrative but should still provide a generally disturbing jolt to the system. And jolting the system is what Cloverfield does best, as we recklessly join our segregated group of friends as they lay prey to the terrifying bouts of destruction that come hurtling their way. One of the best and most effective cinematic examples of this (and why the film will work to a lesser degree on DVD), is a fierce and agonising struggle on a bridge that uses surround sound to usher the audience into the action – you will, like the characters actually feel the vibrations emitting from the structure as it is attacked and thrown apart by a strange gargantuan creature.

One of the other achievements that Cloverfield effortlessly endorses is the old ‘keep the monster secluded for as long as possible’ chestnut. And this helps to keep the suspense bubbling on a back-burner for as long as possible, capturing smart glimpses of the creature in the heat of his mammoth destructive tendencies, which subsequently help to retain the fear factor for longer. I won’t spoil it for the unacquainted viewer by even hinting what monstrous concoction they have created here, but lets admit he’s not a pretty sight! Kudos to both prolific producer J.J Abrams and to (former T.V episode stinter) director Matt Reeves for keeping such a tight leach on proceedings and learning to go by the ‘raw is real’ code of conduct that has so smartly served other, more senior directors, such as Ridley Scott and David Cronenberg in there previous alien and insectode encounters. The sense of terrifying globe-threatening panic is surprisingly fresh and tangible even after the repetitive slew of cinematic catastrophes witnessed before in the likes of The Day After Tomorrow and The War of the Worlds, and this is dually thanks to the innovative feel of the hand-held camera and pounding and pulsating murmurs of the diagetic soundtrack. Cinematic restriction, as we all know, can certainly benefit the filmmaker and this is certainly the case in the absence of any underlying epic score, which keeps things welcomingly grounded in the appropriate context.

It’s just a pity the duo didn’t also realise the potential in getting your audience to actually give a damn about their doomed protagonists. On the whole Lily, Marlena, brothers Rob and Jason and cameraman Hud are a bunch of ostentatious unlikables who we wouldn’t mind (though probably wouldn’t care to admit) being killed off in various gruesome ways. This is largely due to their unwarranted abilities to hinder and blemish the effect of the events with their annoying bantering and half-hearted commentary. It’s a real shame that the effect should suffer so much as a result of their presence, but it does and therefore it comes to a bit of a guilty relief when some of them are mercifully dispatched.

Cloverfield drives the formally antiqued monster movie into newly explored and unsettling cinematic territory and should provide enough titillation for fans of the genre, but don’t expect to be won over by character sympathy.