I’ve been wanting to see Cloverfield since seeing the initial un-named trailer with the Statue of Liberty without her head. Finally this last weekend, Bryn and I went to see it while it was still on the big screen. Half the theater hated it and voiced that opinion loudly, (but half the theater was punk kids with ADD and no Ritalin.) I thought it was brilliant!
I can see how one would either love or hate this film, though. There’s not much gray area. The hand held filming style lends a certain credibility and realism to the movie, but it nearly gives you a headache and you’re constantly straining your neck to try and see what’s just off camera. So many times in my head, I was yelling, “Hold still dammit.” or “No! Effin’ A, go back to the monster!”.
Furthermore, no questions are answered. We never find out what the thing is, why it’s eating Manhattan, why you explode if bitten by the giant parasites, etc. We don’t find out if it dies in the end or even if our protagonists survive. People with mush-brains tend to hate that. They need everything spelled out and neatly buttoned up in their movies. I, for one, am the opposite. The more open ended the plot, the more your imagination can take over and create it’s own plausible scenarios. And the fact that the film didn’t provide any “experts” to tell us anything, the actual physics and back story are left up to us to ponder. Being the overly-analytical skeptic that I am, I really appreciate that.
Big warning — spoiler after the jump.
So if you haven’t seen the movie yet, do yourself a favor and wait until you do. Half the fun of the movie is that you never really get a good look at the beast.
So after getting back, I googled for Cloverfield monster pics. And there aren’t any! Not real ones anyway. All over the net are these “artist renditions” that don’t look anything like the movie monster. But now that the movie is out of the theaters, the film makers are releasing a few details about JJ Abrams creature. And Hasbro is releasing a limited edition model of the actual monster. The goal was to create a beast unlike anything anyone has seen before. I say mission accomplished. Not since Giger’s Alien, have we seen something this creatively unique.
And now best of all — the film makers are discussing the possibly of a sequel. I think that can totally be pulled off in a new way to keep this franchise alive. In their own words:
While chatting with director Matt Reeves, the subject of a sequel came up. This is what he had to say:
“Only time will tell. While we were on set making the film we talked about the possibilities and directions of how a sequel can go. The fun of this movie was that it might not have been the only movie being made that night, there might be another movie! In today’s day and age of people filming their lives on their iphones and handy cams, uploading it to youtube… That was kind of exciting thinking about that.”
And Here’s the actual movie footage of the monster scenes for comparison…
