[rating=4]

A Bad-Ass Monster on the Loose…

This film is a true spectacle.

Boosted by a remarkable internet marketing campaign (which involved: the five-minute snippet of Lady Liberty’s head rolling down a New York street; misleading, trippy-as-hell Japanese ads; international news reports of oil rigs being mysteriously sucked down in the middle of the ocean), “Cloverfield” had fans lined up, eager to finally see the source of all destruction, the infamous Cloverfield monster. Producer J.J. Abrams (of MI:III and Lost fame) and first-time director Matt Reeves had a lot of expectations to live up to. And boy, do they deliver.

“Blair Witch” meets “Godzilla”? More or less, but it’s more than that. While the makers of “The Blair Witch Project” understood that what you don’t see is a lot more frightening than actually showing something scary, their film was all anticipation, with no resolution, and we as the audience felt a little cheated at the end.

It’s a tricky concept, one that Shyamalan’s “Signs” also tried to sustain, and almost did, but the alien revealed at the end was a lot more plain than the ones our imaginations envisioned. In terms of keeping us on the edge of our seats “Cloverfield” works perfectly, wisely panning away at the most interesting moments (Holy shit… did we see it? Was that a…? Damn it, we want to see more!) up till the end, when we get a glorious long shot of the thing… and it’s pretty damn frightening.

It could have been even more frightening, but as the US PG-13 answer to Japan’s Godzilla, this will do just fine. More than that, in the midst of all the other Hollywood blockbusters of the past decade or so, “Cloverfield” stands out as one of the most inventive ones.

Like “Blair Witch…”, the whole film is based on footage found in what used to be Central Park, NYC. The first twenty minutes is all build-up – the main characters are introduced, having a good-bye party for one of their friends who’s departing to Japan. There are some who complained that the characters are shallow and self-absorbed. Welcome to the real world – have you been to college recently? Plus, again, this film is all about the idea that it’s found DV footage, and as that it works brilliantly – it puts aside such potentially strained necessities as “proper character development”, as well as the origins of the monster (which makes it more enthralling). All the actors (young unknowns, which adds to the effect) are ultra-realistic. I especially liked the previously recorded footage of the main character and his girlfriend having a romantic time, which keeps cutting in as a shocking contrast to the current horrific events.

So everyone’s partying at this dude’s good-bye bash, and then – boom! – shit starts to go down. From then on it’s pretty much non-stop action, and from the Brooklyn-Bridge destruction sequence to the subway-tunnel chase (was there a more effective use of night-vision recently?), director Reeves knows exactly what buttons to push, and when to push them.

Sure the film is not without its flaws. Some dialogue feels forced and scripted, some events a bit too coincidental, some of the things the characters survive make you scratch your heads in disbelief…

But it’s rare nowadays that a Hollywood monster blockbuster even aspires to be artistic (“Batman Begins” comes to mind). It’s especially rare for a Hollywood monster flick to have such immediacy: certain shots from “Cloverfield” – a lone horse with an empty carriage in the midde of Manhattan; a dark skyscraper leaning against another, the city burning in the back – are quietly devastating, alluding to our post-9/11 fears, our worst nightmares of an unknown terror. Oh, and there’s that one helicopter-scene… Fuuuuuck! But you have to see it for yourself.

“Cloverfield” made me smile. Here’s a film that took some risks, and is exhilarating based purely on that – the originality is like a breath of fresh air in an industry chocked up with clone-like mega-budget stinkers (hello, Michael Bay). “Cloverfield” is a helluva experience, full of sound and fury and a contagious sense of fun its filmmakers must have had coming up with it.