CLOVERFIELD, 2007
Movie Reviews!

Revolves around a monster attack in New York as told from the point of view of a small group of people.

REVIEW:

I can just end this review saying just one point: GREAT PREMISE but TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE film!

It seems that it was just a month ago that Hollywood presented us with a movie about a monster that terrorizes New York City and we the audience get to see this from just an individual's perspective. Oh yeah, it was a month ago when Will Smith took patrol in I AM LEGEND.

This time we follow Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and his posse of friends that we're suppose to care about: his brother Jason (Mike Vogel), and Jason’s insignificant other, Lily (Jessica Lucas); a bored, boring single, Marlena (Lizzy Caplan); and Rob’s nitwit buddy, Hud (T. J. Miller), who has been recruited to videotape the party.

Just a side note: Ever notice that in every single show movie/TV show about a group of friends, there's always that dumb friend who’s part of the gang. Why would smart people (supposedly) hang out and be best friends with a dumb person? They wouldn’t.

Cloverfield is being marketed as a monster movie but is really a feature-length gimmick movie. And horribly written one at that. This film really angers me because is has so much potential be a good film with commentary about our world, but it resorts to ‘Whoa dude’ and ‘Holy shit’ dialogue from people who are suppose to be smart (they live in multi-million dollar apartments in the heart of NYC overlooking Central Park, so they must be doing something right!), but seem to be doing stupid thing after stupid thing.

I sat in a theater of young 20 somethings – an age group I’m barely out of – and I seemed like I was a complete generation away from this film as I really had no understanding of these characters. It was a full crowd during the matinee screening and I noticed most people really didn’t like this film, while others I talked to afterwards loved it!

I scratched my head in wonderment what they liked about it as my stomach was really bothering me. I thought it was the popcorn I ate but it was more. I headed to the bathroom stall and threw up, which was a direct result to what I just saw. Did you think the Blair Witch Project was bad? This film’s erratic handheld home movie camera shots just made my stomach turn so much, I had to close my eyes during the screening for minutes at a time to calm me down. And my stomach just couldn’t take the pain any longer and punished me for watching this really bad film.

I probably wouldn’t mind this concept of showing home video footage during a tragic event if there was actually a social commentary of universal life theme around it.

I thought the filmmakers might be making a point about how the contemporary compulsion to record the world has dulled us to actual lived experience, including the suffering of others. But of course they aren’t that clever - I’m sure their pitch to J.J. Abrams was - “Whoa dude, holy shit, we just came up with this cool concept” And J.J. is on a roll and when you’re on a roll you can make shit happen. And making shit happen is what J.J. forced me to watch. You owe me J.J. and when I see you next, I’m going to ask you personally to give me my money back.

½ star out of 4

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