Review: Cloverfield

* * * 1/2

Michael Stahl-David, Lizzie Caplan, Odette Yustman, Jessica Lucas, Mike Vogel, T.J. Miller. Written by Drew Goddard. Produced by J.J. Abrams. Directed by Matt Reeves. Rated PG-13. 85 minutes. Paramount Pictures.

The new thriller Cloverfield, a startling tale of the invasion and destruction of New York City fueled on an undercurrent of 9/11 paranoia and mounted as a savage monster movie, has finally arrived in theaters after a deafening internet buzz surrounding a film kept close to the vest for nearly a year by the filmmakers and studio. Was it worth the wait or at least the fanboy frenzy around its symbols, meanings and potential monster? You bet it was, and Cloverfield is the first really good film of 2008, a jolting metaphor for the terrorist attacks and a tense survival story. It’s also a lot of fun.

On the eve of his departure to Japan, New Yorker Ben Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David), having reluctantly accepted a job overseas, is the recipient of a surprise going away party thrown by brother Jason (Mike Vogel), friend Lily (Jessica Lucas) and "main dude" Hud (T.J. Miller), charged with videotaping goodbye messages from the trendy crowd haunting an overstuffed downtown loft. Also in attendance is acquaintance Marlena (Lizzie Caplan) and potential girlfriend Beth (Odette Yustman), the girl about to be left behind by the guy who loves her but just can’t tell seem to get the message across.

So far, so good, and Cloverfield immediately establishes its visual conceit of allowing us to participate in the festivities through the lens of a camcorder, a style which takes some getting used to before a loud boom, blackout and vibration sends the group to the roof to investigate what may or may not be an earthquake. The film economically conveys a familiar warmth in the small circle before hurling them into the abyss—an all-out attack on Manhattan by an unknown, killing force of destruction, sending the ragtag band into melee as heroic Ben and company embark on a dangerous odyssey uptown to rescue Beth, critically injured in her Midtown abode.

As the disorientation escalates, producer J.J. Abrams and director Matt Reeves unspool a string of frights: the decapitation of the Statue of Liberty; the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge; a shocking subway tunnel surprise; exploding bite victims; rabid insectoids and a truly malevolent beast.  That the film doesn’t bother to explain its villain’s origin or intentions only heightens the sense of paranoia, and the film has good fun offering glimpses of its reptilian invention until the film’s final reel. Last year’s South Korean picture The Host employed a similar story but revealed its creature upfront, diminishing its returns as well as our wonder and imagination. Cloverfield keeps us guessing until the end, and even when we’ve seen the perpetrator, we are still not quite sure what we have seen (even when we’ve been inside its mouth).

The film is light on plot and heavy on atmosphere and simple ingenuity.  Employing a canny device of allowing a central character to video tape the entire experience and essentially shoot the film, Reeves manages a feat of immediacy that could have been gimmicky, yet is unbearably tense given our proximity to the danger.  Minus a helicopter sequence near the film’s end, we are uniquely positioned at street level, gazing up at destruction and a city aflame and under fire.  The herky-jerkiness, a staple of this style, is artistically sensible here given the film’s integrity in visual execution.  Some may complain of motion sickness, yet the image stabilizes when it counts, such as a moment when the camcorder night-vision is activated at just the wrong moment, illustrating what Cloverfield ultimately does best—it thrills.

Forget depth of character or drama, which is not to say the performances are not highly effective in their simplicity and freshness from the novice cast.  Once the film passes the twenty-minute mark, the film wisely eschews talk in favor of survival, becoming a race to the rescue that keeps topping itself in the freshest ways that make this little film, hyped to the heavens, a real winner.

The New York City sets (actually studio-built in LA) are impressive in scale and effectively dismantled, including cobblestone Soho streets blanketed by debris clouds, a ravaged, Pisa-esque apartment tower in Midtown and a war-torn Central Park in the film’s climax. 

Great movie thrillers have always held up a mirror to their times, whether Invasion of the Body Snatchers to McCarthy-era communism scares, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the upheaval of the nuclear family or the current spate of techno-thrillers all but begging us to discard our laptops, cell phones and videotapes.

Cloverfield offers a different reflection, and it is more frightening for it, with pungent 9/11 imagery—massive clouds of dust engulfing lower Manhattan, paper and refuse littering the sky and make-shift trauma wards set up on city street corners. There is no way to avoid it—when the first strike is launched and we are placed in the frantic confusion of a darkened, claustrophobic stairwell—the origin of our fear is clear. Great horror films tap into primal fears, and this one goes to a recognizable and recent one with guts.

Cloverfield, a feverish movie freak-out disguised as an amateur home movie gone awry, delivers scares and fun in equal measures. It’s a scrappy, creepy little trip that knows just how to shake you up with its modern portrait of terror on the streets, and in our hearts.

- Lee Shoquist