Monster Hit!
I've blogged on this movie three times now. But this time, I've actually seen it.
I'm here to say that my prediction was right and my fears unfounded. Cloverfield was awesome. I read that J.J. Abrams got the idea for the film when he was in Japan and surrounded by Godzilla toys. He thought to himself, "we don't have an American version of the monster movie like Godzilla." Well, now we do. The "Cloverfield Monster" (I hope they come up with something else to call it soon) is unlike anything we've seen before. I'm accustomed to watching movies and thinking, "oh that's a CG shot" and watching the action unfold confident that I'm seeing virtual images. And so I knew as I watched Cloverfield that this was 90% computer-generated images. But what made it so different from other movies was the camcorder.
Usually in big CG-laden films, the images are rendered in the highest resolution, and once you add motion blur and atmospheric effects, it begins to look like those creatures existed on the set with the live actors. Yet, most of the time the resolution is almost too crisp, and they stand out as easily identifiable CG images. Not so this time around. Why? Because you can only get so much resolution from a camcorder.
The result? Every image that we see is a low-res, low-light, highly jittery and poorly framed shot. In other words, it looks exactly like every home movie you or I have ever shot. Only this home movie has some wild creatures and other spectacular visual stuff in it. The CG guys have gotten so good at being able to import virtual images into a hand-held shot, that you really can't tell what's real and what's fake. It all moves exactly the same way, and that makes it all very realistic.
Once you successfully suspend disbelief and take in the imagery, the result is genuinely terrifying. But in a good way. I've blogged before that the horror genre has become a much bigger part of the movie pie largely due to the ability for directors to show us more horrific imagery via CG. That's not the kind of thing I'm talking about here. There is hardly any blood in the movie. In fact the filmmakers seemed to go out of their way to make all the bloodier parts happen off screen. There's even very little profanity in the movie (well, 35 "s-words" according to Screenit.com, but no f-bombs anywhere), and no nudity (besides a bare back for a moment). So it's a "clean" scary movie.
I haven't even mentioned the story aspects of the film. The movie tells a story in a perfectly linear way. Everything that happens in the story comes to us through the lens of a single camera. There are no cuts to different angles of the action. If the camera gets dropped, we'll see the ground for several moments before someone picks it up again. The really surprising thing is that one of the reasons this movie is a hit is that it tells a good little love story amidst all the carnage. The way that they figured out how to insert "flashbacks" to an earlier time in the characters' lives is just genius.
I've already blogged today about the summer movies that I'm excited about, but I'm really glad that I got to kick off my 2008 movie year with Cloverfield. I hope the other movies in my recent list deliver the same experience I had this week.
If you are prone to motion sickness, this movie's not a good idea on the big screen. But if you like rollercoaster rides and don't mind an occasional jump-scene now and then, you should check this movie out. We could be in for more like this in the future.
I'm here to say that my prediction was right and my fears unfounded. Cloverfield was awesome. I read that J.J. Abrams got the idea for the film when he was in Japan and surrounded by Godzilla toys. He thought to himself, "we don't have an American version of the monster movie like Godzilla." Well, now we do. The "Cloverfield Monster" (I hope they come up with something else to call it soon) is unlike anything we've seen before. I'm accustomed to watching movies and thinking, "oh that's a CG shot" and watching the action unfold confident that I'm seeing virtual images. And so I knew as I watched Cloverfield that this was 90% computer-generated images. But what made it so different from other movies was the camcorder.
Usually in big CG-laden films, the images are rendered in the highest resolution, and once you add motion blur and atmospheric effects, it begins to look like those creatures existed on the set with the live actors. Yet, most of the time the resolution is almost too crisp, and they stand out as easily identifiable CG images. Not so this time around. Why? Because you can only get so much resolution from a camcorder.
The result? Every image that we see is a low-res, low-light, highly jittery and poorly framed shot. In other words, it looks exactly like every home movie you or I have ever shot. Only this home movie has some wild creatures and other spectacular visual stuff in it. The CG guys have gotten so good at being able to import virtual images into a hand-held shot, that you really can't tell what's real and what's fake. It all moves exactly the same way, and that makes it all very realistic.
Once you successfully suspend disbelief and take in the imagery, the result is genuinely terrifying. But in a good way. I've blogged before that the horror genre has become a much bigger part of the movie pie largely due to the ability for directors to show us more horrific imagery via CG. That's not the kind of thing I'm talking about here. There is hardly any blood in the movie. In fact the filmmakers seemed to go out of their way to make all the bloodier parts happen off screen. There's even very little profanity in the movie (well, 35 "s-words" according to Screenit.com, but no f-bombs anywhere), and no nudity (besides a bare back for a moment). So it's a "clean" scary movie.
I haven't even mentioned the story aspects of the film. The movie tells a story in a perfectly linear way. Everything that happens in the story comes to us through the lens of a single camera. There are no cuts to different angles of the action. If the camera gets dropped, we'll see the ground for several moments before someone picks it up again. The really surprising thing is that one of the reasons this movie is a hit is that it tells a good little love story amidst all the carnage. The way that they figured out how to insert "flashbacks" to an earlier time in the characters' lives is just genius.
I've already blogged today about the summer movies that I'm excited about, but I'm really glad that I got to kick off my 2008 movie year with Cloverfield. I hope the other movies in my recent list deliver the same experience I had this week.
If you are prone to motion sickness, this movie's not a good idea on the big screen. But if you like rollercoaster rides and don't mind an occasional jump-scene now and then, you should check this movie out. We could be in for more like this in the future.
Labels: movies
posted by AdmiralDack | 2:44 PM
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