Cloverfield is a bold attempt to bring the old-fashioned "monster on the rampage" movie into the modern era. It's the work of the director Matt Reeves (best known for Felicity) and the producer JJ Abrams, creator of Lost and Alias. This is a Godzilla for the YouTube generation, delivered in the wobbly handheld-camera style of The Blair Witch Project.
The film opens with no credits, just a hint of apocalypse. We're informed that we are watching a film found in "an area formerly known as Central Park". It begins as a video diary of two lovers, Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Beth (Odette Yustman), out on a date in Coney Island. The camera then falls, several weeks later, into the hands of Hud (TJ Miller), who is put in charge of filming Rob's going-away party. It is through this camera alone that all subsequent events are filmed.
Rob's party is going with a bang when everyone hears a sudden boom and the lights go out. The twentysomething crowd rush up to the roof to see what's happening. Great balls of fire are destroying buildings. Someone asks: is it a terrorist attack? Eventually, they catch a peek of some sort of monster on the loose.
Rob, who has joined the mass exodus out of Manhattan, gets a phone message from Beth: she is wounded, and can't move. So Rob - and a few friends, including Hud - rush off to rescue this distressed damsel back in her dad's apartment near Central Park. It means going in the direction of the creature.
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Once the party is over and the creature turns up, it looks as if Cloverfield is going to be a worthy successor to King Kong and Godzilla. The opening 20 minutes are visually stunning. The use of a handheld camera gives an on-the-spot intimacy to events. The small, sweaty human stuff of panic and fear and off-camera cries is as important as the big set pieces of tall buildings collapsing like Lego toys or the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty bouncing down the street. The ridiculous never looked so real. But the film's early rush of oh-my-God fear fades as Rob and co cross the city. The drama dissipates; the scare factor slackens. The film's realism gives it authenticity, but it undermines the making of great movie movements. Reality loathes dramatic licence.
The screenwriter, Drew Goddard, has followed the golden rule of monster cinema: delay the money shot of your monster for as long as possible. But he has gone one step further and made his creature almost a bit player in this story. It has no background. It doesn't even have a name. It's not a result of man playing God, or would-be gods playing with man, as 1950s monster films about the threat of communism were. This thing is just out there and out of control. It's devoid of personality or pathos, so we don't experience anger or even a secret admiration.
Instead, the movie is driven by character, not catastrophe. That's fine, but Goddard's characters are so bland, so instantly forgettable, that we don't have an emotional investment in their fate. Rob is just another successful suit, Beth a babe, Hud the dork with the heart of gold.
Cloverfield strives hard to look and sound real, yet the young cast are clearly acting, and not very well, either. They talk like people in twentysomething dramas. It might seem pedantic to complain about lack of realism in a film featuring a giant monster running amok in a city, but if you're going to do real, then make it realistic. It would be impossible for a group of young people like this, faced by a giant creature, never to mention a single monster movie.
Much has been said about the film capturing the paranoia and fear of post9/11 America. These days, any film set in New York that doesn't feature singing nuns is said to capture the post9/11 zeitgeist. True, Cloverfield references the events of that day by showing us great waves of dust filling the streets of New York. But, with one brief exception, the characters never talk about terrorism. It's a nonissue. Indeed, what is refreshing about the film is that it offers no simple conclusions or message. Characters are constantly confessing that they have no idea what is going on or what it all means. Cloverfield offers none of the cathartic payback pleasures of the conventional monster film.
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What it really reflects isn't so much the post9/11 mood as the digital narcissism of the YouTube generation. These are people who live on camera, but have nothing to say about life. The film seems to be offering a critique of the narrow self-obsession of these young people. They never bother to phone their family or friends to tell them they're safe. And they show no concern for the city of New York or anyone they don't know. Rob is on a personal quest for romantic satisfaction at a time of public calamity. Their selfish creed is summed up by one of the guests at the party: "Forget the world and hang onto the people you care about the most."
The film itself, however, reflects a loss of vision, a retreat from epic myth-making, by narrowing everything down to the first-person perspective - as if an attack on a city by a monster were just another bit of kew-el footage of a freaky event. The classic monster films of the past were based on the idea that such an attack was a threat, not only to a city, but to a civilisation, and showed how society as a whole would respond. Here, the sole perspective is one man, his camera and five of his friends.
In the absence of grand narratives that give coherence to great public events, we settle for the fleeting freak show that we can capture on camcorders and mobile phones, and see on YouTube. The monsters are still big; it's the pictures that have got small.
15, 85 mins