Undergraduate Admissions

I went last night at midnight to see Cloverfield with my roommate. He bought the tickets online ahead of time, which was pretty cool. I could see myself doing that pretty often.  (As a side note, since when is the smallest popcorn you can buy over $5? I was gonna get some, but that’s just ridiculous.)

The movie was really great in a lot of ways. Filmed excellently. I wouldn’t really change a thing about the directing or even the acting. But one thing that really got me was the lack of story. Most people who don’t mind this say “It was about the people, not the story!” which can be true, but I think that makes for a less meaningful movie.

It’s like they say in the Blue Oyster Cult song “Godzilla”:
“History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man”
That was the part most missing from this movie. What is this monster? Where did it come from? Why is it attacking? Without any one of these issues clarified, the movie seems devoid of meaning. Maybe it’s part of the 9/11 allegory that is obviously in the minds of the creators, but I disagree even with that. Many people see 9/11 as something that came from out of nowhere , with no reason or warning, and perhaps the creators were trying to put this feeling into the film. But I think that’s a bit naive. Everything has its causes; whether it’s justified or not, nothing is really pure destruction for destruction’s sake, but that’s all Cloverfield provides.

The fact that there are cryptic alternate reality game websites providing information that has nothing to do with anything directly mentioned in the movie only makes it worse. I guess I should have expected this kind of shenanigans from the guy who made Lost, which I’ve heard so many complaints about for the same reason–that it ends up seeming like the creators are just toying with the people who are searching for some kind of real meaning or explanation. More than an explanation, though, I’d have liked a message. I also would have liked some kind of twist; for a movie with marketing this cryptic, there really was pretty much nothing that shocked me throughout the entire movie.

Oh, and in the ending credits there was a Godzilla-sounding ending piece that referenced/ripped off the music from a bunch of Godzilla movies. In a way it was a nice touch, but I thought it was a little patronizing. It sounded like somebody who never saw a Godzilla movie was trying to replicate the music from them. (This is something that I would never in a million years expect anyone else to notice/care about.)

Though this post is filled with complaints, I did enjoy the movie. I certainly wasn’t bored and I thought the characters were all great. I’m just frustrated because it did everything right that most monster movies (including most Godzilla movies, I’ll admit) do wrong. The characters, the directing, the pacing, the feeling, were all spot on. But it felt like somewhere along the line they left out some of the aspects that made giant monster movies so impressive in the first place. I’d still recommend that anyone who thinks they might like a movie about a monster attacking a city filmed from a camcorder go see it, because it’s definitely, absolutely worth seeing. But without some kind of meaning to it, I feel like I have no reason to ever see this movie again. It’s like a ride at an amusement park. It’s a lot of excitement, but after you’ve gone on it, you pretty much know what it’s like, and there isn’t really anything there beyond that.