STUFF YOU GOTTA WATCH - The Omega Man

CLOVERFIELD

(2008)
With Lizzie Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T.J. Miller, Michael Stahl-Davis, Mike Vogel, Odette Yustman
Directed by Matt Reeves
Reviewed by JB

Papa Smurf loooves the ladies! I often complain about CGI effects in movies, but once in a while, I see a CGI-filled film and have nothing but praise for the effects (see some of my Harry Potter reviews). CLOVERFIELD is a perfect example of how CGI can and should be used in movies. While most of the film was shot using the usual greenscreen process, with CGI filling in the backgrounds, you would never know it. New York City is completely recreated (and lovingly pummeled to the ground) using computer generated effects, and I didn't spend a single minute thinking about how they did it. There are some things I have to complain about (but you expected that by now, I guess) but the special effects get an A-plus.

CLOVERFIELD, produced by J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost), is an attempt at showing what a Godzilla-like attack on New York would look like as documented on handheld video camera. This is a technique that already shows signs of being played out, but the cinema verité quality of CLOVERFIELD is what makes it stand out among other films in the "Giant Monster Destroys City" genre. There's no musical soundtrack beyond whatever is played at the party, and there is no editing of shots except for those moments when the camera was obviously turned off and turned back on sometime later. There aren't even opening credits - we are just plunged right into the story. The day starts with a twenty-something party where relationships are falling apart where others can't even get started, and ends with several characters hiding under a bridge while the military drops bombs all around them. In between, we follow a group of young characters trying to make it through the night without getting blown up, crushed, eaten by a 30-story thingy with fangs or attacked by the crab-like parasites that drop from its body.

Of course, it just so happens that this particular group of young people happen to have a video camera and happen, quite unfortunately for them, to keep stumbling into the center of the action. (It seems that if you lived above Central Park, you probably wouldn't have made an interesting movie.) Everywhere they turn, the monster is not far behind. And we're talking a trek from Spring Street to Central Park, and if you are a New Yorker, you know what kind of a walk that is. Yet, no matter where these guys and gals wind up, they turn around and the monster is there. Seems a but implausible, but the movie is short enough and fast-paced enough that you might only think about this afterwards. Most of the time you'll just be thinking about the monster that could be around any corner.

Other things you might think about after the movie is over: Did the monster actually throw the head of the Statue of Liberty? Why? And that's quite a throw too, if he threw it from the river. Or maybe he was carrying it around and just got tired of it? Why is Manhattan only filled with people under thirty? Why are all the girls at the party completely gorgeous? Can you really travel underground on the subway tracks from Spring Street to 59th Street without ever once encountering a train? I know the trains weren't running, but there had to be at least several of them stalled on the tracks, right? And those stalled trains had to have people on them, right? Where were they? And can this group be so deaf and blind that they don't even see or hear a 30-foot monster standing in an open field right behind them until it eats one of them? Can you actually travel forty stories up one building, jump over to the roof of another, travel a few stories down and never encounter anybody else except the person you're looking for?

All good questions. Maybe we'll discover the answers in the inevitable sequel. ½ - JB