The “Break it Down” Blog

NOTE: I have tried to keep spoilers to a bear minimum (or not at all) in the main review. The “Areas of Improvement” section does contain spoilers and is marked as such.

Summary [7.5 out of 10]

Cloverfield is a suspenseful, well-paced, believably portrayed recounting of a group of friends during an epic monster attack on Manhattan. Unique monster design, excellent sound work and effects all sell the story that is occurring… unfortunately this almost-excellent movie shows a bit of cheese by blending in a love story and too much shaky handy-cam work.

Background

When I first saw the teaser for Cloverfield, I was in love. There were no if-ands-or-buts about it… Epic-unnatural-disaster movies are basically awesome to me. Whether they be aliens or unexplained phenomenon there is something about epic unnatural disasters that tickle my brain to death; I just love them. There is this appeal of knowing that everyone else is seeing what your seeing… there is no chance of you telling someone and them not believing you… you all witness it.

Given the setup of the trailer and my own love for the genre, I actually tried to only listen to negative reviews of the movie once it was out. I wanted to know all the bad parts about it, so I could prepare, and when I saw it, I’d actually like it.

Be Prepared

1 comment I consistently heard from everyone that saw it (either liking or disliking it):

• The shaky-cam is done to death. Sit in the very back row of the theater, or you will get sick watching it.

I completely agree with this assessment. If you haven’t been to a shaky-cam movie before (The Blaire Witch Project) you need to be prepared for it.

First you need to understand this isn’t going to be some amazing HD-crazy thrill ride like Transformers was. This entire movie is shot with a “handy cam”. In reality it was probably a production-quality HD handy cam, because it looks pretty good, but the effect you see in the trailers of it being shot on a handy-cam is how the entire movie looks. So if that will piss you off, don’t go.

Secondly, the camera jerks around… A LOT. This isn’t normal action-handy-cam work… this is trying almost too hard to be realistic… as if you DID hand a friend a camera, told him to record, and had him run through a disaster. You don’t stay focused on things for long and it’s constantly swinging around. I’d say the first 20 mins of the movie are a bit brutal, the camera swings everywhere, and around the 35 or 40min mark it settles down a little bit, but not a whole lot. Because I knew this was coming, we sat about 8 rows from the back of the theater, and if I had to do it over again, I would have sat in the very back. So keep that in mind (I normally sit in the middle, or at the 1/3 mark in the theater, just for reference).

The Story & Acting

Both excellent in my opinion except for 2 parts where the character’s acting was bland… not bad, it just felt bland… like they should have had a line or some reaction to something and didn’t. But it was minor, maybe 45 secs worth of screen time that was weird?

The setup at the beginning of the movie is about 20 mins of a party being planned. The purpose is to explain the character’s personalities to you and get you dialed into how they act and what they are like. I really liked this segment of the movie because it allowed me to accept why the guy with the handy-cam recorded the whole movie. A lot of people have said “That’s such crap, if that happened to me I’d drop the camera and run”, but the way they introduce that character that does all the recording, you really buy into why he kept the camera going the whole time. It was important to him.

The story over all was badass. The monster was frigging huge and had a sweet design/feature to it. I won’t say any more about it (you can ruin the plot for yourself online) and the destruction in the city was awesome. Also the way the movie slowly unfolded the monster to you through scenes where you only see part of it, then some other part of it, etc. was so well done and paced that it was spot-on to keep you interested. I never felt like they were purposefully hiding it from me and I never felt like it was being shoved down my throat. Excellent timing with that.

Also… an “aspect” to the monster that I thought was stupid at first and cheapened it, was made awesome later by the effect it had on one of the characters.

The portrayal of the army’s deployment in the city and then rescue of civilians felt good. I’d say it’s really hard to capture “How would the army react in a situation like this?” and as an uninformed onlooker, I was pretty happy with how they were portrayed, I bought into all of it (as opposed to say Transformers where the army is completely retarded and duped by a bunch of kids and more than happy to expose top-secret information to strangers at the drop of a hat).

On part of the story I didn’t care for, but I’ve heard others liked, was a little bit of a love story mixed in the main story line. It’s not major, but the girl involved in it, in the last quarter of the movie, just doesn’t feel right. I can’t say more without giving away story, but it seems her part in the script for that last quarter could have been nixed for a tighter story arc… but like I said, others liked it, so it’s really up to your personal taste. The writers had a reason for her as they explained when interviewed about it, I just didn’t like it particularly.

Also there is no real ending that is tightly tied up, and you might want to stay until the credits are over for a little nibble of information. That doesn’t spoil anything, just prepares you so you don’t go “What the fuck?!”

Special Effects & Sound

CG was pretty damn good, but not phenomenal. You still knew you were looking at CG, some scenes more so than others. It was probably in the top percentage of CG out there, but not the cream of the crop.

The sound was brilliant. Not much more to say about it… there was no music, just the sound effects alone carried the entire mood/action of the movie and it was fantastic.

Conclusion [7.5 out of 10]

Overall a great movie. I’d say either rent it (so you can see it on a smaller screen) if you have an awesome setup, or sit in the back of the theater for sure. Also be OK with the handy-cam, and I think you’ll enjoy yourself. Also don’t get hung up on why the character keeps recording, cause you won’t be able to enjoy the movie (just a heads up for the folks that may be thinking about this the entire time).

Areas of Improvement [SPOILERS]

WARNING: This section contains spoilers!

Just like with our game reviews, we feel like we can’t be critical of something unless we have suggestions on how to improve it. So here are out suggestions for improving this movie.

• Get rid of the love story. The fact that this was used as a mechanic to get them back into the city and racing against the clock felt cheap… if his girlfriend was alive in that building after it was fucked up like that, then I imagine 100s of other people would have been alive in there too screaming. The place was dead-quiet like only she was lucky enough to be alive.
  • It was also too cheesy for this movie, when she wakes up from being passed out to look into his eyes. I would have either had her writhing there in pain screaming or dead. Given how raw the rest of this movie was, that was such a clichéd scene with her.
• Again, with the girlfriend after they save her… they pull her off of an impaling rebar through her chest… she hobbles and descends 54 flights of stairs and runs for 2 miles without a hickup. Ummm no I don’t think so.
• The CG of the pod/spider monsters that fell out of the giant-er monster was a little shoddy, especially in the subway tunnel.
• The pod/spider monsters had such weak attacks for being vicious enough to severly fuck up Marlena’s back. They were able to just kick them off and punch them off, but then Marlena’s back is mauled and the one that tries to get through the door is strong enough to require 3 of them to close it. If they were that strong, they would have freaking murdered them in that tunnel. And they have like crocodile mouthes anyway.
  • I actually didn’t like these little things at all until I saw what the bite did to Marlena once they were rescued, that was cool.
• This is nerdy… but I was annoyed that the monster didn’t show the damage it was taking at all. It’s an amphibious monster, and rockets/guns/missles are hitting for the better part of 5 hours and there are no marks on it. I think it would have been really badass to see big bleeding welts or scars on it as it was continually beat on through the night by the army/airforce.
• Talk about magically random… they escape from certain death in the subway tunnel and happen to walk out of the subway… directly into some store like JC Penny’s that is connected to the subway or something, and there is a spotlight shown on them for some reason then bam, the army shows up and they happen to be right in the middle of a camp the army has setup to treat people. Whhaaa? Where the fuck did this stuff come from… and they just happened to walk right into it? Too convenient.