FEBRUARY 8, 2008 - VOL. 1, ISSUE 1

Cloverfield a.k.a. 1-18-08 a.k.a. Slusho a.k.a. Cheese a.k.a. This Movie Has No Freaking Title Yet, Enjoy Transformers, Thank You is all about the buzz. A teaser was constructed before the movie had a title, showing movie-goers a clip of (you finally did it, damn you) the Statue of Liberty’s head flying down a Manhattan street. That, coupled with "Lost" creator J.J. Abrams' name attached as producer, was more than enough to make Paramount Studios look like some sort of cool, innovative marketing genius. Of course, I’m sure this isn’t the first movie that would sell just by showing one freaky part of it, sans title. I mean, show Linda Blair’s head spinning around with no other information given, and you’d still fill up seats opening weekend. The studio did part, as so many do these days, from conventional teaser-trailering when, shortly before the release date, it let five minutes from the opening hit the Internet. “Enticing” is a big thing now, I guess. But Ghostbusters, like I’d let anyone forget, got buzz simply by putting the logo around town.

But there’s a point to the mysterious marketing of Cloverfield (which is an arbitrary title, also pertinent in its untelling principle), because we’re forced to see it through the eyes of characters who know very little about what’s going on.

The film plays on the idea exploited so well (and I mean this commercially, though a couple moments from it did freak me out just a little) by The Blair Witch Project, which is that less information creates more fear. The whole “fear of the unknown” manifests itself in a number of ways. First, there’s always that “are the main characters going to die?” thing. The movie opens with a faux-US Government label that insinuates the setting of the movie has somehow ceased to exist. So, wherever our heroes, whom we’ve yet to meet, are, is presumably, seriously, not safe at all. I always play out all the scenarios in my head at this kind of set-up. The characters all die, some die and this camera footage was left behind, or they all get away and, whoops, someone left the camera behind, not that I’d blame them. Second, the first-hand account only offers what the camera sees. This sounds lame and obvious to point out, but, we’re talking about Manhattan at night. When it’s dark, the camera either can’t see or has to turn on a little light or switch to night-vision. When the ground shakes, it’s hard to tell what’s going on. When noises occur (though the sound in the movie is excellent), viewers can only hear things so far away, and, of course, the film clocking in at around eighty minutes, covers more than seven hours, so certain moments are lost.

Look at the poster for the movie. Yeah, it’s kind of The Day After Tomorrow meets Independence Day cool, but it’s very telling, something I didn’t realize until I’d seen the film. Claw marks on Lady Liberty indicate some animal has smacked her head off, and a long path through the water and through Manhattan indicates that some giant, no-respect-for-architecture thing has come from under sea. In spite of all the buzz-building, little-information-given marketing, you’ve got the whole premise for the film right on the poster. “Huge undiscovered water creature attacks New York.”

Popcorn-movie premises are funny. “300 dudes without chest hair fail to defeat Persian army.” But this film has a simple and effective plot. Rob has landed a VP job that’s about to drag him to Japan. At his going-away party, he fights with his friend, Beth, whom he recently had sex with and hasn’t talked to much since. Beth leaves the party and Rob, who we can all tell at this point loves the girl, is bummed. Then Manhattan gets attacked and Rob gets a call for help from Beth on his cell phone. Rob and three of his friends then go through a lot of dangerous shit to save Beth. And, of course, at the end of the film, Rob and Beth finally get say “I love you,” just before the bridge they’re hiding under collapses on them. Aww. It’s not genius or anything, but, putting two characters in love and then sending one after the other is a really basic and successful formula for Hollywood films, and I still go for the sentiment when it feels complete enough.

I know it’s arguable that those smaller, artsy films, the ones that win awards in festivals, are very telling of a contemporary culture, but I say there is still something about popcorn, blockbuster-type movies that reveal a great deal about society. What Cloverfield does is combine a lot of shit we’ve been forced to look at a lot lately. The film shows a lot of New York destruction, which, of course, harkens back to the images so many of us became glued to around 9/11 (I’m sure Giuliani mentioned 9/11 when he saw this). For some goddamn reason, our culture has never shaken that fear of total annihilation. Zombie movies, those two meteors-hitting-the-Earth movies, that global-warming-causes-an-abrupt-ice-age movie, movies about aliens coming along and getting rough, and so on. There’s a major voyeur-reality-TV effect going on. A hand-held camera (I’ve heard plenty about how this made people nauseous) that the operator insists on using, even when he could really use his other hand (though I thank him for not chronicling all fifty-plus flights of stairs he climbs at one point) marks a YouTube-era obsession with taping reality. I thought “holy shit” when I saw this film was rated PG-13. Violence is apparently totally okay. At one point, one of the main characters bleeds from every orifice, then is taken behind a backlit tent so we can see her silhouette expand, then then burst into horrible screams. We get a good idea of what just happened, because moments earlier, we saw a guy wheeled by someone who was horrifically missing his midsection. Yuck. Then there’s the, “I mean, wouldn’t being at ground zero scar you for life?” issue, where I can imagine being traumatized if I were a kid watching buildings explode and people die from a first-person view with convincing 21st century effects. It’s not like I’m a conservative, caring, concerned parent, but, come on. If there had been a nipple in this anywhere, it’d be rated R. Our culture shuns sex way more than it does violence.

I’m not really one for big-market action flicks, but this movie is worth seeing, even if you’re into "serious" film.

It succeeds, of course, on its mass-audience appeal by providing scares. There’s a nice moment, for example, when rats are running down a dark subway tunnel and the characters decide to find out what the little rodents are fleeing from. Someone flicks on the camera’s night vision, and we immediately see a trio of freaky-looking creatures lurking on the ceiling not fifteen feet away. People scream at that type of shit. If it’s pure thrills someone wants, then, there’s plenty. There’s a moment when the three characters we’re left with are escaping via helicopter and see the monster get bombed. There’s a brief victorious moment, but, in a blink, the monster jumps up and hits the helicopter, and we go down with the “holy shit we’re going to die” passengers. Disaster movies always make me think, “what if I were there...” and this one goes right past that thought and doesn’t let you leave. There’s no film score to take away any sense of reality.

This movie mixes the “don’t show the monster” theory with the “show the monster” theory. For a good while, we get glimpses but not detailed shots of the gargantuan beast. Then, we get very telling news footage. Then, at the very end, our poor cameraman is looking straight up at a sunlit monster for several seconds before he’s killed.

if you want artistic flare, you can find it in rare moments. The scene where a women bursts behind a tent is both artsy and cost-efficient. Plus, it’s hard not to dig images like a white horse pulling an empty carriage through a deserted and havoc-wreaked Manhattan. You just don’t see that every day, and, for a popcorn flick, it’s an interesting shot. In terms of its storytelling, the film manages to tell a parallel narrative between the night of the attack and the morning after Rob had sex with Beth. For a moment, I was just a little annoyed at the film opening with a dude filming a naked girl for what felt like more than a minute. But the opening footage is important for the movie. Rob and Beth are happy, in love, but they’re just friends at this point. Rob lets us all know how important this footage is by worrying about it being taped over during his party. At times when the tape is stopped, gaps in the recording of the attack offer us a glimpse of Rob and Beth at Coney Island. At the end of the film, the two are snuggled on a fairground ride, and Beth utters the now-ironic, “I had a good day.” Plus, I actually thought it was a nice touch to open the film with a shot of a calm Central Park through the window of an apartment we come back to later when the building is smashed and about to collapse.

Yes, I’m probably giving this film a pretty fair amount of credit more than it would get from most movie-buff-critical assholes, mostly because I never expected anything deep from it. It doesn’t make you think, except to figure out what the hell is going on, which I found to be an interesting enough venture. The film’s marketing essentially said, “hey, this is a freaky-scary thing, man” and, on that level, for what it’s trying to do, it works. As a telling piece of culture and entertaining piece of cinema, it’s worth seeing.

By the way, some people are obsessed with the end of the credits, during which Rob says (this is what I hear) “Help us,” but, gasp! Played backwards, apparently, he says, “It’s still alive.” Shit like that does make people stay through the credits, and freaky shit like is indicative of the entire genre.