Gojira And The Flood Take Manhattan: Cloverfield

Gojira, Ishiro Honda's 1954 landmark film about the A-bomb, has aged remarkably well. Brought to the West (and re-edited, and adding an American character) as Godzilla, it spawned as many thrills as it did sequels, on both sides of the pond. It's been adapted more times than is strictly necessary (Matthew Broderick, I'm looking at you!), but I don't believe it's ever been successfully updated or translated. Until now.

Cloverfield (2008) is a simple and familiar story: a group of New York twentysomethings, while throwing a going-away party, get caught in the middle of a monster attack. Of course, they can't evacuate right off the bat, as one of their number needs rescue on the other side of town. Cue the quest! Now, when telling simple and familiar stories, one of two things usually happens: it either plays out as a lazy, boring mess, because the filmmakers didn't bother going past "simple" and "familiar" or, the filmmakers use the opportunity to build off those foundations into something insightful and even a little bit new. I'm going to go way against the flow here and say that Cloverfield, under the direction of Matt Reeves and with a screenplay from Drew Goddard, falls into the latter category.

"But Elly! Isn't Cloverfield just a rip-off of The Blair Witch Project, with stupid characters to boot?" No, no it's not.

Let's talk plot, characters, and the nature of translation. The most common professional criticism I read regarding Cloverfield was that the characters were so vapid, vacuous, unlikeable, and unrealistic that no one cared if they lived or died. Rolling Stone went so far as to whine, "where's Juno when you need her?" The denizens of Cloverfield consist of Rob, the subject of the going away party; his brother, Jason, his best friend, Hud (also the cameraman), Jason's girl, Lily, and Lily's pal/Hud's love interest Marlena. Are they vapid? The first twenty minutes or so of the 84-minute picture is Rob's going away party, wherein slacker dude Hud is charged with filming well-wishes for Rob to watch at his new job overseas. What starts out as well-wishes quickly turns into an excited gossip-fest when Hud accidentally learns that Rob has slept with friend Beth, and this news - and the reaction(s) to and fall-out from it - take precedence over everything else. Sex gossip, vapid? Absolutely! In the slightest bit unrealistic? Of course not. Rob, Jason, Lily, Hud, and Marlena are people everyone this age knows. They're also dead-on archetypes of my generation. Rob is the young professional, not an over-achiever but just someone who's willing to work hard, and comes across as a bit alienated from his friends for it. We never learn what scruffy Jason does for a living, but it's probably safe to assume that he's just that: scruffy, the achiever's brother who sees no need to over-exert himself as Mom already has someone to be proud of. Lily is a bit glamorous, likes to be in charge and a bit condescending, and comes off as that girl in high school who was so cool that someone in every clique thought she was their friend. Hud is the consummate contemporary "go with the flow" guy, who probably goes to LebowskiFest (or at least owns a "little achievers" shirt) and can be safely described as immature, one rail short of a total trainwreck - he probably idolizes Kevin Smith. And Marlena just about steals the show as the nihilistic hipster who's too cool for everything. None of these people are especially profound, but neither are they empty. They're just normal, but not the cool, attractive sort of normal. The characters of Cloverfield are the everymen of this generation, and we're not exactly used to seeing "everymen" films. I think a lot of the critical hate for them derived from a whole lot of self-denial. No one likes to look in a mirror and see an inane reflection that could use some serious improvement. On top of that, for even more realism points, the characters act like such characters would reasonably act. When my husband expressed his disdain that they were at one point in a room full of weapons - pipes, wrenches, etc. - and didn't take any, I realised that what makes a character plausible or not isn't what they should logically do, but what the film has told us these characters would do. The cast of Cloverfield is nothing if not consistent - no out-of-character smarts or epiphanies. Some reviews commented in response to their actions that the characters had clearly never watched a horror film, to which I would reply, have you ever heard cool people seriously discussing and pondering at legnth what they would do in the event of a monster/zombie/alien attack? Because I'd have to believe these characters were capable of those kinds of chats in order to believe that they'd actually do things like make a plan of attack. As it is, I thought the characters and cast were great, and went a long way to making the film what it is.

Which raises the other critical question: what is it? Some say it's a tacky 9-11 catharsis. Some say it's a bad Blair Witch rip-off. Some say it's nothing but a gimmick. Some, like the New York Times, say it's just a stupid, useless film, period. When I said it's, to my knowledge, the only translation of Gojira to date, let's clear up what I mean by "translation". The Magnificent Seven is a translation of Seven Samurai, or Shall We Dance? is a translation of Shall We Dansu?. In both cases, a quintessentially Japanese story was transformed into something sensible to, and reflective of, the U.S.A. Like Gojira, Cloverfield is about the most pressing, imminent, widespread, and experientially justified fear of its time and place. Unlike Gojira, we have no idea who or what spawned the monster. This is well in step with the fears and realities of terrorism. The Middle East is so complex, and so many claim credit for the same crimes, and so few people trust government intelligence, that it seems we can rarely, if ever, say with certainty who was responsible for what attacks. Learning where the monster came from worked in the time and place context of Gojira; maintaining a mystery worked very well, and made a lot of sense, for Cloverfield.

What else is Cloverfield? A solid horror, I say. Yes, it builds off a lot of existing works, but I'm not so ignorant as to believe that every story should or can be "new". It's not about what you build off, but how you build it. Cloverfield has everything from Gojira (Rob is leaving for his new job in...Japan!), The Planet of the Apes (Statue of Liberty!), YouTube/the CNN iReport, Alien, and the baby monster-spawn (and the first clip of soldiers blasting them with assault rifles) reminded me stylistically and aurally of the Flood head-crabs from Halo (though my husband says they were more akin to the critters from Pitch Black, which I haven't seen...but is in many circles considered a benchmark sci-fi/horror of my generation).

A note on the monster: no, it's not the scariest thing since the titular stars of Alien or The Thing. At first, I thought director Reeves had made the classic blunder of revealing too much monster. I call this a blunder because the old saw about our imagination being more terrifying than reality is generally true, and I believe that's why so many movie monsters turn out to be disappointing. But in this instance, I wonder if Cloverfield's reveal wasn't in fact carefully considered. When we finally get a (very) good look at the monster, it's in clear, early-morning light, with nothing behind it but sky. No dark, no rain, no blue, green, or grey filters. This makes me inclined to think it wasn't a classic blunder, but a commentary on the nature of our unseen enemy. Everyone remembers how pathetic Saddam Hussein looked during his incarceration and trial: once a mysterious, untouchable, purveyor of terror and death, we saw him assert his innocence to the court and the world as a rumpled, blustering, Dorito-eating joke. If this is the direction Reeves and co. were going with their monster reveal, then it's also quite significant that a character is killed by the monster right after seeing it clearly. It's bad enough to be horribly mutilated; it's just humiliating to be horribly mutilated by something with puffy red ears - perhaps this is part of the point.

Of course, to enjoy a film like Cloverfield, you need to watch it for what it is, and yes, part of what it is is widely considered to be a gimmick, and you need to roll with that and watch it as part of the film - but not the whole. The problem occurs when you don't watch a film past its gimmick. This obsession has burned a lot of great or pretty good movies. The first Blair Witch remains one of the most solid horrors I've ever seen, but when left Sundance for wide distribution, the buzz choking the entertainment pages wasn't about it being a pretty decent and innovative film, but about how it made people puke in the theater. A lot of people don't see the first Matrix as a strong sci-fi because they're too busy seeing it as nothing but the sum of its slo-mo FX. On the small screen, Michael Imperioli is understandably frustrated because the buzz surrounding his first-rate performance on Life on Mars isn't about said performance, but about his big 70's hair and mustache. Of course, gimmicks can work in reverse: Napoleon Dynamite is a very average film composed entirely of gimmicks, and a lot of people think it's the greatest thing since Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Classic (for my generation) action films like Back to the Future, Speed and Air Force One are 110% gimmick, and everyone accepts that and loves them for what they are. If the film is good enough, people don't even notice the gimmicks - I heard not a peep about the exclusive use of hand-held in the extraordinary Once, and those who have seen Memento speak of it as an artistic masterpiece.

Question: When is a gimmick not a gimmick? Why wasn't Spielberg's hand-held Battle of Normandy in Saving Private Ryan called out as a gimmick? Could it have been the overall film quality, herein referred to as the Once factor? Colour film stock, realtime, and 3D animation were all one gimmicks - what made them into normal film practice? Will hand-held ever escape the gimmick label? Discuss.

Another thing that can burn a good or decent film: being relased too close to a similar, better film, in this case, Korea's The Host. Cloverfield is a very good film; unfortunately for it, The Host is excellent, and superior in almost every way. I've heard from many reliable sources that The Illusionist sucks. Maybe it does, I don't know, or maybe it "sucks" because it came out at the same time as The Prestige, which is superior to almost every film made in the last fifteen to twenty years, and has similar subject matter. Only time (and actually watching The Illusionist) will tell.

This is a hard film to review, because there really is a lot to it. I think it's a near-perfect picture of my generation and the times we live in. I think it's a fantastically successful translation of Gojira. I think it's a very decent horror. If you're willing to actually watch it, Cloverfield is an interesting picture with a lot going on in it, and worth the 84 minutes.