January 20th, 2008
CLOVERFIELD: A Big Angry, Hungry Baby*…
…or “whine. STOMP! Roar! SLASH! whine. whine whine.”
If the main characters of CLOVERFIELD weren’t rejects from some godawful Felicity episode, I would have liked it more. But obviously, monster flicks are more candy than dinner, so I’ll do my best to ignore their tired twenty something shenanigans.
THE GOOD
The You Tube style documentation. They captured every bit of the “man on the scene” video flavor. From seeing only glimpses of the Ocean Critter at first to seeing it in the altogether for fleeting moments, they hit the mark spot on.
Ocean Critter on a stroll through Manhattan. Fuck me runnin’, that was some awesome special effects. Call me crazy but I’ll be damned if it didn’t look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. 21st century style, of course and mostly from the front when Hud gets an up close and personal view. (I can’t give a side by side comparison cause I blanked and didn’t save the screen shot of the monster that sparked that realization. My bad.)
Marlena: It…it was eating people.
Awestruck terror and emotion. Yes. More of that please.
Short bursts of newsfeeds , unsure glimpses of a rather large tail or leg, the military giving their best to slag the beast: all good things. That makes it the most real monster experience I ever hope to have.
Ratatat was played in a movie. Sumbitch, there’s hope for you bastards yet.
THE BAD
The You Tube style documentation. What was brilliant in more than one instance became pretty fucking tedious in the long run. Hud’s “amateur cause it was supposed to be” camera technique was irksome as all hell towards the end.
There is a reason why I didn’t watch Felicity or Gossip Girl or The OC or Dawson’s Creek etc etc. That reason was all those useless people at Rob’s going away party. I was never so thankful for a monster attack as I was after being subjected to that damn party for a solid 20 minutes.
Little to no character-love. Many Creature Features at least try to make you like the main monster fodder(waves happily at SLiTHER). All we got were the same archetypes we always see. The pussy-whipped, unsure about his feelings for the girl in question CEO. The girl in question who is confused by said CEO’s asshattery and yet manages to move on with her life. The damaged chick who wishes the lovestruck idiot with the camera would get a clue and move on. The clueless brother and his girlfriend who was actually the most useful human being in the entire thing. She was also the one who didn’t get a lot of screen time. That’s not a coincidence, I’m sure.
EXTRA NON-CLOVERFIELD RELATED BAD
Chatty bastards in a movie theater. Why on this fresh, verdant Earth do random asshats feel the need to sit behind you and talk as loud as they fucking please in a theater in public is beyond me. I blame your asshat parents. They obviously didn’t have the sense enough to train you in how to use an inside voice or how to respect others in public. For that, all of you should be flogged within inches of your lives.
And to the guy sitting next to me, upgrade your robot programming and learn how to emote like a human. Also, please stop pointing out the obvious. I was there. I know it was the Statue of Liberty’s head on the ground. It’s okay. It wasn’t the real Lady Liberty’s head. It’s fiction. Chill the fuck out and do it silently.
THE KILL STOMP
Critters ran amok. Shit went boom. Uknown critter-bite plagues were spread. Suspense/action was moderate. That’s an overall grade of a solid C in my book.**
*JJ Abrams claims the monster we saw was just a baby. This makes me consider the sequel possibilities.
**That grade may drop when I finally see THE HOST and it proves the better monster mash.
