Honey, get the camera. There's a monster outside!

By Manohla Dargis
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Friday, Jan 25, 2008, Page 16

Cloverfield tries to be a monster movie, but ends up a gimmick. PHOTO COURTESY OF UIP

It was only last month that Will Smith started up boogeyman patrol in Manhattan in I Am Legend, and yet here we go again with the end of the world, or at least some of New York's most exclusive ZIP codes. This time, the annihilation comes courtesy of a reptilian creature with a slithering, smashing tail, multiple grabby appendages and an apparently insatiable appetite for destruction. At one point in Cloverfield, you get a close, very personal look at that hungry mouth, which agape recalls that of the adult monster designed by H.R. Giger for the first Alien, though without any of the older beastie's freakily sexualized menace or resonance.

Like Cloverfield itself, this new monster is nothing more than a blunt instrument designed to smash and grab without Freudian complexity or political critique, despite the tacky allusions to Sept. 11. The screams and the images of smoke billowing through the canyons of Lower Manhattan may make you think of the attack, and you may curse the filmmakers for their vulgarity, insensitivity or lack of imagination. (The director, Matt Reeves, lives in Los Angeles, as does the writer, Drew Goddard, and the movie's star producer, J.J. Abrams.) But the film is too dumb to offend anything except your intelligence, and the monster does cut a satisfying swath through the cast, so your only complaint may be, What took it so long?

Cloverfield tries to be a monster movie, but ends up a gimmick. PHOTO COURTESY OF UIP

As it happens, Cloverfield clocks in at 84 minutes, a running time that includes the usual interminable final credits. The movie moves relatively fast, though it's nowhere near as economical as its colossus, whose thunderous shrieks and fiery projectiles bring a downtown loft party to a merciful, abrupt end. The loft belongs to a blandly pretty-young-thing named Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who, on the eve of relocating to Japan for work, has been thrown a farewell party by some other blandly pretty-young-things. The names we're meant to remember are those of Rob's brother, Jason (Mike Vogel); 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.

Film Notes CLOVERFIELD DIRECTED BY: Matt Reeves STARRING: Lizzy Caplan (Marlena), Jessica Lucas (Lily), T. J. Miller (Hud), Michael Stahl-David (Rob), Mike Vogel (Jason), Odette Yustman (Beth) RUNNING TIME: 84 MINUTES TAIWAN RELEASE: TODAY

Cloverfield is nominally a monster movie, but mostly it's a feature-length gimmick. It opens with some official-looking US government text claiming that the following images were retrieved from what was once known as Central Park. The big (or rather only) idea here is that almost everything we subsequently see is the presumably unedited video material shot by Hud, who, though initially reluctant to pick up the camera, develops a mania for documentation once the monster strikes. So consummate is his dedication to his version of cinema verite that he keeps the camera plugged to his eye even while he's running through hailstorms of debris, trying to cross a fast-collapsing bridge and witnessing friends melt down, bleed out and even die.

For a brief, hopeful moment, I thought the filmmakers might be making a point about how the contemporary compulsion to record the world has dulled us to actual experience, including the suffering of others - you know, something about the simulacrum syndrome in the post-Godzilla age at the intersection of the camera eye with the narcissistic "I." Certainly this straw-grasping seemed the most charitable way to explain characters whose lack of personality ("This is crazy, dude!") is matched only by their incomprehensible stupidity. Smart as Tater Tots and just as differentiated, Rob and his ragtag crew behave like people who have never watched a monster movie or the genre-savvy Scream flicks or even an episode of Lost (Hello, Abrams), much less experienced the real horrors of Sept. 11.

And so, much like a character from a crummy movie, Rob hears from an estranged lover, Beth (Odette Yustman), who after the attack begs for help on her miraculously working cellphone. Against the odds and a crush of fleeing humanity, he tries to rescue her (unbelievably, ludicrously, the others tag along), which is meant to show what a good guy he is. But heroism without a fully realized hero proves a dead end. Like too many big-studio productions, Cloverfield works as a showcase for impressively realistic-looking special effects, a realism that fails to extend to the scurrying humans whose fates are meant to invoke pity and fear but instead inspire yawns and contempt.

Rarely have I rooted for a monster with such enthusiasm.