Cloverfield Broke My Brain

You might be forgiven if you can’t parse the precise meaning of my title; is is a trifle ambiguous.  I could be suggesting that the movie was so awesome that my brain just couldn’t comprehend or contain it — or I could be suggesting that it actually physically broke my brain.  Given how I teetered and stumbled while leaving the theatre, and the dizziness and headache that persisted after I got home and forced me to bed early (well, early for me, anyway), I believe the second interpretation is more accurate.

That is not to say that Cloverfield was bad — just that the overriding element that stayed with me was that the shaky, hand-held camera work that I found so nauseating that I spent the second half of the movie with my eyes half closed, or looking at the ceiling, or the walls, or anything but the screen.  I can’t even blame proximity to the screen — I was in the very back row of the theatre.  I know that I’m more sensitive to motion sickness than most people (I find first-person video games nauseating as well), but I’m also not the only one to complain about this, either.

So, my basic thought here is whoever first decided to film a professional movie like this should be drug out into the street and shot.  (Disclaimer: I don’t actually think this, and I have no liability or responsibility should that persona actually but drug out into the street at shot.  It’s a joke, people.)  I couldn’t watch most of this movie, just like I couldn’t watch most of The Bourne Ultimatum, or any other movie filmed with this shaky camera syndrome.

Directors apparently like this because it adds to the “gritty realism” of the film.  I am rather inclined to disagree — there is no adding of realism to a third person viewing experience, and all it adds is motion sickness.  That said, it can be used effectively in limited quantities, adding a lot more mobility and fluidity, and to provide contrast with different parts of the film.  But using hand-held camera work for a whole movie is too much of a bad thing.

Anyway, that’s enough of the ranting about how it was filmed.  I should probably talk about the actual movie.

The basic idea behind the movie can be summed up as “street-level view of a giant monster attack on Manhattan”.  Where most giant monster movies focus on the monsters and the people fighting them, this movie is about the regular people who get caught in the middle.  As a premise, it’s pretty neat.  Unfortunately, there is a conceit behind the movie, too: the movie is supposedly what one of these people filmed on a camcorder during the attack.  Thus, we are treated to old material on the tape comes through as flashbacks, as well as a disjointed and disoriented storyline, and really, really bad camera work.  It starts with a going-away party being recorded, and during the party, the monster attacks, and the guy keeps the camera rolling as they try to get away, and then turn around and stupidly go back to save another friend.

I was not terribly enamoured of this conceit, as you may have gathered, but the story it was putting across wasn’t all that bad — except for the irritating romance element.  However, even though the movie was short, I still felt it was a little slow in places, and on its own, the movie provides no answers.  The extensive online promotional efforts apparently revealed quite a bit more back story, though there are no concrete answers.  The acting was passable — if a little forced, in places — and the special effects seemed pretty good, but my overall reaction (intellectual reaction, anyway — I’ve already detailed the physiological) to the movie is…. meh.  It was okay.

This was very much a “concept” movie, and it clung to that concept for dear life, even though it doesn’t quite work everywhere.  It’s the sort of movie that I would normally never bother to see, except they made it a monster movie and so that grabbed me.  For me, the “concept” — monster attack as filmed by a person caught up in it — doesn’t work.  The content, however, largely does.  And so I’m left with really mixed feelings, and that’s all that I can really say.