Saying I like my Apocalypse movies is probably an understatement. If there’s an Apocalypse movie I haven’t seen, then I either don’t know about it yet, or its sitting somewhere in my house, waiting for me to watch it. Cloverfield fits into a specific sub-genre that we are seeing a lot more of since September 11. It’s a genre I like to call Apocalypse of America. Now “apocalypse” may seem like an incorrect term when it’s just America or a subset of it that’s being destroyed (as opposed to the whole world). I leave it in there because for the majority of its inhabitants, America IS their world. If you destroy America you might as well have destroyed the whole world. Let’s face it, America is going to do whatever it has to in order to come to terms with that event. It’s just my luck that making gripping thriller movies happens to be a part of that.
Recently, while yawning disappointingly at the utterly unscary plastic zombies in I Am Legend, I had time to reflect on the fact that being an Apocalypse movie alone is not enough to entertain. After such a let down I was sceptical about Cloverfield, as I’m sure were others. I recently saw the film and it greatly exceeded my expectations. In fact it’s the first time in a long while that I have watched, jaw dropped with amazement. This film has raised the bar for production values, delivering a degree of realism seldom seen in this genre.
I should start by saying that the idea of the film is not very original. *cough* Godzilla *cough*. But are there really any truly original ideas left? It seems like everything has been done before in one way or another. So if you can put aside your expectation for an original and ground breaking plot, then you might just enjoy this film. After all, Heroes is just X-Men with a different name and I really enjoy that. So it is possible.
Luckily, I’m not fazed at all by handheld camera work. If you are, you might want to avoid this film (and possibly the rest of the review). But this is one film where the handheld shooting style actually works. Despite knowing in the back of my head that parts of it would be impossible to shoot on a handheld, it still adds an element of drama to the film. Somewhat voyeuristically, it gives the viewer a more direct portal through which to enter the movie world, while adding a good amount of “oh my god” factor. In truth, I was hard pressed to find any fault with the film’s visuals. I mean, I was expecting some scenes to look like obvious green screen or CGI composites, but it all looked really frickin’ REAL!
Now the characters. Most of them are nice looking but that alone doesn’t make us care about them. The relationships were pretty well constructed, with some back-story; we get a glimpse of this through sporadic cuts to “footage previously on the tape”. The dialog and acting was slightly weak in some areas but overall not too distracting. The tipping point for me caring about the characters was a scene in the subway where our lead is confronted with a rather unpleasant responsibility, and that’s all I’m saying about that (it’s not what you think). The film’s entertainment value comes from imagining what it would be like for you to be in such a horrific situation. Second guessing the character’s decisions as if they were your own and empathising with their own tragedy.
