Cloverfield
J.J. Abrams presents The Blair Monster Project.
You need more? Fine.
I’m trying to not be as negative about Cloverfield as I really want to but it’s hard. Here are the reasons I wanted to walk out of the theater:
- over-hyped with all the secretiveness
- the potential annoyance of a film is proportional to the amount of shaky-cam used…and this film only used shaky cam
- the “inventiveness” of faked found footage sort of worked to The Blair Witch Project‘s benefit because they were unknown filmmakers on a low budget. Using this “technique” for a high dollar film makes you wonder why any photography-related position involved with the film would want their names attached. It reeks of “I couldn’t figure out how to shoot this as a real movie”.
sidebar: Abrams is now on my list of “movers and shakers” to be wary of. When “Alias” started to go bad was the same time that Abrams started heavily relying on what I call “the flash-forward”. It is a story technique where the protagonist is presented at the beginning of the story during the climax of the conflict, then the scene shifts with a title card proclaiming “Earlier That Day”. It is a crutch for a writer who has no hook to draw you into the story naturally. “Show them the bad thing that’s going to happen later and maybe then they’ll stick around to see how the hero escapes.”
- This is not a monster movie. It is a (crappy) love story that happens near a monster. You will probably spend most of the movie craving the monster and you will probably be very grateful when it does appear because…
- even the love story that threads the film is rife with “suspension of disbelief” problems. Almost every relationship portrayed in the film has some factor to it that makes it a real stretch to buy what’s being sold.
If that is a 75% maybe it is time for me to go see a 37% movie.
3 Responses to “Cloverfield”
Comment from <img src='http://www.rollerfeet.com/backporchbeer/wp-content/plugins/rpx/images/facebook.png'/> etrigan
Time January 21, 2008 at 4:35 pm
lol! check out the comments at Linkfilter including the critique of review site RottenTomatoes.com:
- “I’ll always remember Cloverfield as the first thing that made me vomit since that teriyaki in San Diego.”
- “If the monsters weren’t in the scene, I kept wondering when they would show up so they could eat more people.”
Those were some of the positive review blurbs on the first page.
Pingback from Backporch Beer » Star Trek (2009)
Time April 7, 2009 at 12:00 am
[…] opening scenes that compelled you to put down the remote. Between there and Cloverfield (which I didn’t care for at all) he started cheating the intro with the “flash forward” crutch. Abrams is […]
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Comment from John_Austin
Time January 20, 2008 at 8:46 pm
As I thought. Basically a movie aimed at the brain dead who would rush out during its opening weekend and quickly hand over their hard earned money for hype and marketing.
People wiht some common sense and an understanding of how the movie industry works will avoid this like the plague.