Cloverfield Review

It's basically "The Blair Witch Project" with a budget.

I know a lot of people put a lot of work into this film, but, yes, sometimes you can just break a movie down into one sentence.

Both "Blair Witch" and "Cloverfield" used largely unknown actors and operated under the device that the story was being told through video footage that has been found afterward.

"Blair Witch" invented a realistic-sounding legend and made us think its story might be real, while "Cloverfield" piqued our interest by seemingly coming out of nowhere (with an untitled teaser trailer) and a great poster (pictured, right).

The reason I've spent the first three paragraphs talking about the marketing of these two movies is because each film will be remembered more for their ingenious advertising campaign than for the movies themselves.

As you may have seen from the commercials, "Cloverfield" shows us a monster attack in New York City from the perspective of a group of twenty-somethings and their video camera. Then,...well that's pretty much it.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Producer J.J. Abrams was interested in making a monster movie and he mostly succeeds in telling a familiar story in a different and interesting way. There have been reports of people literally getting sick from the film's shaky camera movements, but, what can I say? I've never ever been physically affected by shaky cam (also featured in the "Bourne" movies) and I feel bad for people who are.

Of course, the downside of such a simplistic approach is that we don't really get to know (or care about) the main characters too much. In the beginning, we meet Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Beth (Odette Yustman) who meet back up at Rob's going-away party before he goes to Japan (Godzilla reference?) The two become separated and Rob (and a few friends) spends a good portion of the film trying to see if she is ok.

Again, not terribly complicated stuff. There are a few funny lines mixed in, mostly courtesy of camera operator Hud (T.J. Miller) and director Matt Reeves does a nice job lulling the audience to sleep with a good party vibe before the monster attacks. I thought the obnoxiousness of this group of 20-somethings was a bit over the top, until a group of obnoxious 20-somethings walked into the movie 20 minutes after it started and began acting exactly like the characters on screen.

I also didn't mind at all that the monster and its origins remain mostly a mystery. I don't need a scene of a guy in a white lab coat explaining what happened, and I liked the idea of only following these survivors point of view (ala Spielberg's underrated "War of the Worlds.")

Still, the movie unfortunately has the requisite lack of common sense by the characters we're following. If Abrams' goal was really to put a twist on the monster movie then the creators would've been wise to not have their characters make as many stupid choices as so many other stupid movie characters have made before them.

Then, there's the monster itself. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but it was a bit of a disappointment for me. I mean, I guess it looked scary and Reeves does a nice job of maintaining some mystery around the beast, but, at the end of the day, it looked like just another generic gigantic creature. I would've been more impressed if it turned out that the monster was something unexpected, like a giant puppy. ***SPOILER ALERT*** The monster is NOT a giant puppy ***END OF SPOILER ALERT***.

Still, "Cloverfield" makes for an entertaining — and, at 84 minutes, brief — time at the movies. Where "Blair Witch" had to be more ingenious because of budget restrictions, "Cloverfield" is more exciting because, well, they could actually afford action sequences.

Unfortunately, neither of them really lived up to the hype.

Cloverfield...B-