Cloverfield: Ticks, Explosions, Flashbacks, Logistics, Dramatic Convenience, 9/11 Parallels... and Laughter

I recently had a monster movie marathon. We watched "King Kong," "Godzilla," and "Cloverfield." King Kong was delightful, just a fantastic mix of charm and genuine visceral violence. "Godzilla" was somber, sterile, cold... but in a good way. "Cloverfield" though...

"Cloverfield" is the type of movie that drives me crazy. It is a good movie that could have been a great movie. These type of movies get one part of my brain praising the good, and another part nitpicking the bad, and I find that these two parts start bouncing off of each other and filling my head with thoughts and opinions greater than the sum of their... parts. With that in mind, I thought I'd write about it.

Let's talk about the 9/11 imagery. The most striking is the nature of the monster itself. In "King Kong," the monster's destructive rampage is the result of man's contempt for nature. In "Godzilla," the monster rises due to irresponsibly administered man-made nuclear tests. In "Cloverfield," however, the monster just shows up and starts murdering New Yorkers. There's no rhyme or reason, it's just sudden, inexplicable violence. It's terrific.

Secondly, there's a scene early in the film where the monster knocks down a building and the debris are funneled down the street in a way so reminiscent of a particularly... memorable scene on 9/11 that I refuse to believe it's a coincidence. It's downright eerie.¹

There are other, more minor things. Having recently watched a documentary composed entirely of citizen camcorder footage of New York on 9/11, the cinematography was, at least for me, a contributing factor. You have large-scale foot traffic evacuations, the military on the streets. We only see media coverage in a few brief scenes, but its very similar to the 24/7 glued-to-the-screen imagery of 9/11. There's few hard facts, but a lot of speculation, one of the protagonists even speculating that the government itself had a hand in the monster's creation, or knew about it beforehand. Yeup.

J.J. Abrams said he wanted to make a monster of America in the same sense that Godzilla is the monster of Japan, and in the thematic sense he succeeded.² Godzilla embodies the anxieties of Japan in its post-WW2 situation, and this monster does the same for 9/11. I really enjoyed this aspect of the movie.

I think the structure of the movie is what... I don't want to say "grates" or "bothers" me, but there's something to it the disconnects me from enjoying the movie more than I otherwise would. The problem is that it purports to be a "naturalistic" look at regular people surviving an unbelievable, dangerous situation, but the script keeps putting these "regular" people into an action movie sequence every 20 minutes like clockwork.³

In fact, I can pinpoint the exact sequence in the movie where it loses its momentum. The opening scenes are terrific (by which I mean the opening scenes with the monster, after the boring characters are done talking about their inconsequential love lives). There's a good presence of mystery and menace; mysterious explosions, blackouts, an oil tanker overturned... something terrible is clearly happening, but what?

Then, on the street, you get the famous Statue of Liberty head sequence. Don't get me wrong; it's not likely that these characters would be standing right where the head of the Statue of Liberty lands, but its still within the realm of plausibility. They could just be "lucky" like that. After that, the eerie 9/11 sequence from above in which the monster is where you'd expect him to be, and as dangerous as you'd expect him to be.

Soon thereafter, they go to the bridge. This sequence bugged me when I first watched it. Now, I assume at this point the position of the monster is pretty well being confirmed and constantly updated. It likely wouldn't be difficult, eh? The direction the characters are being evacuated, by police officers, is almost certainly away from the monster. And then... the monster suddenly shows up, with but a few seconds of warning, and smashes the bridge. This violates some of the "rules" established in the previous scenes, mainly where the monster is⁴ and the mere fact of it walking around is enough to be a deadly menace to characters blocks away. In this case it shows up and smashes apart the Brooklyn Bridge while they're standing on it, the tail (or tentacle or whatever the hell) impacting not far from where the characters are standing, and they get out okay, the only exception being the moron directly underneath it.

Like I said, structure. This is the moment where the monster violates the more plausible rules of the opening in order to give the movie its second action sequence. Not that its not a nice action sequence; the bridge collapsing in front of the cameraman looks incredibly realistic. It's just the split between "real" and "movie" that rubs me the wrong way.

It gets worse in this aspect as it goes. The main characters end up in the middle of a firefight between the military and the monster, fighting bugs in the sewer, walking into a military command post completely by luck, rescuing a friend from a collapsed building, being in a helicopter crash, and, in the case of the cameraman, being eaten alive on camera (after the monster somehow sneaks up on him). On top of this, the characters are taping over footage that, at the end, cuts in with the "origin" of the monster (some kind of impact in the ocean days before), at exactly the right dramatic moment. I mean seriously, you guys.

Now, I don't envy the writers of this type of movie. They have to balance pacing that would seem "realistic" to the characters in that situation with pacing that exposits all that needs to be exposited and includes an appropriate amount of exciting scenes for the protagonists. In this case, however, they go to far with the former... Aspects about the nature of the monster and situation are left vague, but the characters and audience are never confused... they always know enough to know what to do and where to go, there's always explanatory dialogue and warnings about exactly when the bombs will go off. In my eyes, its too structured to come off as an "everyman" account of a monster attack.

One sequence in particular, I think, illustrates a lot of my grievances with the film and just really bugs me in general. It's a scene in which the cameraman is watching a series of news reports on televisions in an electronics store. The focus is on the monster, and the commentators are saying "There seems to be something falling off of it, do you see that?" What's falling off the monster are dog-sized parasites, which immediately start attacking the on-the-ground cameramen and others. Now, here's my problems:

1. Is there any doubt, in anybody's mind, whatsoever, that within 20 minutes the main characters are going to get chased around by these parasites? The exact nature of these creatures are vague, but their existence, origin, and basic modus operandi are completely known to the protagonists and audience. Wouldn't it have been better to get attacked by the parasites first, and get the explanation later? Then there'd be surprise and mystery in the "what's that sound" subway sequence, instead of "it's the bugs, obviously," and it would make the narrative less linear.

2. This is more of a minor editing error, but the movie continues to violate its established monster danger rules, with the parasites falling off the monster and attacking people no less than two meters away when they land. Shouldn't standing that close to the monster be instantaneously fatal?

3. What is with the newscasters here? I'm no journalism expert, but I think they'd be focusing more on, y'know, the monster, rather than the random details surrounding it. Even if they were just being excruciatingly thorough, it doesn't seem like something they'd be focusing on. The monster's knocking down whole city blocks, there's going to be all kinds of rubble and stuff falling off him. Again, wouldn't it be more effective if they didn't say anything of the "rubble," then were surprised when it springs up and starts eating them? It's spelled out too explicitly.⁵

AND WHY CAN'T THEY GET A GOOD SHOT OF THE 25-STOREY MONSTER FROM THEIR HELICOPTERS.

I mean, why even have the ticks? Isn't the monster a big enough obstacle for the characters on its own? They're there solely to chase the characters around inside buildings and stretch out the number of "plausible" action sequences. Nothing more, nothing less.

A friend of mine compared the movie to "Half-Life," and I think he's right. In "Half-Life," Gordon Freeman is never more than 15 minutes away from the next action sequence or plot point, and every time he arrives at a new location there's some scripted event to liven up the action. Of course, the CGI monsters and first person perspective certainly help comparisons, but its the scripted events that kill in this movie.

In my eyes, "Cloverfield" has two kinds of scenes: ambiance, and scripted events. Ambiance is more exploration of a changed environment. For example, food left at tables in outdoor restaurants, various news reports, or the horse carriage without rider in eerily evacuated lower Manhattan. Scripted events are action sequences that occur around the protagonists by sheer luck; a battalion of soldiers showing up right behind the protagonists, jets that buzz the camera, ticks and, later, the monster itself appearing right behind the characters. In the first, the characters are insignificant, and are just surviving in this radically changed city as best they can. In the second the opposite is true, with dramatic things happening, randomly, just when the characters are there to observe them. The environment dramatically reacts to the presence of the characters, instead of the other way around. This goes against the "naturalism" theme of the movie, and is probably its biggest problem.

A few other, random things:

The monster's not that interesting. Director said that J.J. Abrams was trying to create a monster of America in the same sense that Godzilla is the monster of Japan, but its not really interesting enough to be our monster. It reminds me mostly of the space Nazis from the "Resistance" games.⁶

Geez, these characters are boring; mediocre at best, terrible at worst. Name-wise, I remember Hud the cameraman, but only because of the pun of his name. I think the main douchebag was named Rob, and his girlfriend was named Beth. But Rob's brother, or the two chicks? Can't help you. A good chunk of time was spent trying to make you care about these characters' relationships and personalities, but nothing is particularly memorable or interesting. Rob's trying to rescue his trapped girlfriend is the thrust of the narrative, but Rob's the only one who cares; I sure didn't. If you don't care what the main character is risking his life for (and the lives of all his friends), then there's a problem with your movie. Let me tell you, it sat a lot better with the director's commentary talking over these people.

This movie's supposed to be a somewhat realistic interpretation as to what would happen in a monster movie, but there are problems there. For one thing, with a monster stomping around knocking down eight or nine buildings every fifteen minutes, there should be bodies everywhere. I realize that the studio was going for a PG-13 movie here and had realistic reservations about depicting the murder of thousands (if not tens of thousands) of New Yorkers, but it's to the detriment of the "real life" premise of the film. Also, you notice how all of the fleeing people are basically adults aged 20-40? Where are the children and elderly people?

There are a couple of good uses of the camera on which the footage is being recorded. For instance, in the tunnels, they use its night vision to good dramatic effect, and then use it as a flashlight to illuminate the bugs, cleverly giving a reason keep them in the shot as much as possible. The moment after that though... Hud, put the fucking camera down and help them hold the damn door! Rob, don't go back for the camera, the monster is RIGHT BEHIND YOU. Gah.

Hey, would this movie had worked better as a compilation of the footage of various survivors? That way you could have all the action sequences you want, as long as they didn't continually happen to the same people. You could still have Rob and Beth and the rest, but you could cut right from the head sequence to them breaking into her apartment, and have other people fight bugs and find military bases and whatever in between. They could die, crossover... I dunno, maybe?

Phew. Okay, I never have to watch or think about "Cloverfield" again.

¹Please excuse my not linking the video. I write this blog for fun, and when I started digging through youtube footage for it, I was not having fun.
²Of course we already have an "American Godzilla," his name is King Kong. In fact, Godzilla is just Japan's King Kong.
³Yes, I know the movie is like seven hours of footage edited down into two, so there's plenty of "real time" between sequences, but still.
⁴A friend of mine suggested that there was more than one monster, explaining its "sudden appearance." While the military's dialogue doesn't completely rule it out, it suggests otherwise.
⁵On the other hand... you could say that it's the newscasters trying to deal with an unbelievable, patently scientifically impossible event by focusing on anything but the obvious. They're focusing on the inconsequential things falling off of the monster instead of the monster, because maybe they can't really accept the fact that Godzilla is real? Even so, that'd still make them some crappy reporters...
⁶I love the "Resistance" series. "So, you like "Halo" and you like WW2, huh? Well then do I got the game for you!"