Here’s my thing with cloverfield, it was damn intriguing to see how young successful people do their thing the most happening of towns, New York City. And then see how they react as they all face a monster that will undoubtedly kill them.
Much like you and I, they listen to lots of Kings of Leon, the Gorillaz, and they enjoy drinking, dancing and relationships. The point I’m trying to make is that the subjects of this film, the characters, seem like they could be you or me. They’re people you can relate to, or people you want to be able to relate to and for this type of film, that’s really important. Even more important is the casting of these characters. It’s not Toby McGwire or Colin Farrell or any other young hip actor of our time that you could easily see fill the rolls of these characters. Instead they use people that I don’t even care to look up the names of.
For the first twenty minutes you kind of get the feel for the film. A really shaky camera, and testimonials that are equivalent to documentary style film making…in a sense. If you’re having trouble picturing what this is like, think back to Blair Witch Project. Essentially, Cloverfield is much like Blair With Project, only the setting is Manhattan and not some forest. Oh and at the end of the film, you get to see the monster that is causing all this havoc.
Did I just ruin something for you by telling you that you get to see the monster at the end of the film? Well don’t worry I won’t be focusing on any other portions of the plot, as I feel it was not a great story.
Instead I want to focus on the technicals of the film. Now don’t worry, I’m not going to be going into the types of cameras or sound recording…I merely want to discuss what I found to be the most interesting and most relevant part of this piece.
In this blog filled, facebook & YouTube world we live in where we document everything, the choice to show the film through the footage which was shot by the characters was fantastic. Throughout the entire film you are witnessing only what the characters witnessed through the lens of their camcorder. This style of filmmaking isn’t original, it’s been done, like I said Blair Witch and a Greek film I saw at the Chicago Film Festival a couple years ago called CCTV have used this style, but it is interesting. Because it engages the viewer and creates a new dimension to the film. And because this style hasn’t been completely drawn out and exhausted; although, I will go on the record now and say that we better get use to seeing more and more films that use this technique, maybe not for the entirety of the film but for portions of it, in the near future.
Honestly though, this film is relevant to our times. We live in this voyeuristic culture where we spend half the day looking at what other people do on facebook. Although like many films of this genre, sci-fi, thriller, I don’t expect it to age well and in a couple years this film will only be relevant for exposing and exploiting our voyeuristic tendencies.
