Vaughn Chronicles

Cloverfield (A)

Many might disagree with my scoring of the movie, but I really don’t care, this movie kicked my ass seven days from Sunday.

This flick was intense as any I have seen in a very long time. I don’t remember ever feeling adrenaline flowing as much as Cloverfield induced. This is a modern monster classic, and it does it so well, yet J.J. Abrams adds his own ingredients to the classic monster recipe. The main ingredient he adds is the cliffhanger, there aren’t any scientists letting the audience know what it is, where it came from, and how to kill it. Now, people hate cliffhangers, everyone does. Initially I felt a little ripped off at the end, but my imagination kicked in, and took over from there. That was the point, this was what so many reluctantly ignored, they were ignorant and they needed the ending to be spoon fed to them. Cloverfield to me represents a new age in filmmaking. Utilizing not only traditional mediums of advertisements, but introducing viral marketing, and ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) into the mix. Viral marketing is somewhat young, but not entirely new, it went so well for Cloverfield, that many fan sites popped up about it, and had everyone talking about it.

The movie was shot entirely with a Panasonic HD mini-cam, and the budget for the flick was only $25 million. That it folks! $25mil… Most blockbusters are at least $100mil. The premise of the movie being a tape recovered by our Government was great, it really made you really feel you were experiencing something great, something on a very personal level, and something very tragic. A love story is thrown into the flick, and is one of the things that grab you further into the movie; you really feel their pain, and their love.

I would have given this movie an A+ if it had not been for a couple of things I feel inclined to nit-pick. First off, it’s that literally everyone at the going away party looked like a model. I know its NYC, but not everyone there looks like a model, trust me. Secondly is the character Marlena Diamond. Her humor didn’t feel right, it felt a little forced, and stale. Lizzy Caplan was pretty good in Mean Girls, but in Cloverfield she looked identical to Zooey Deschanel in every scene (not thats a bad thing at all, just if she was going to be like her, fucking be LIKE her and step up the acting, k?).

T.J. Miller was great as Hud, bringing a much needed comic-relief to a terrible disaster. Wonder if anyone else noticed the person with the camera was named Hud, as in H.U.D. (Heads Up Display), coincidence or not, good shit.

I do plan on seeing it again, just for the experience, if you haven’t, I insist you do, its quite a ride.

~Vaughn