Cloverfield: It’s not quite what you expected.

OK, so we went to see it tonight.

My verdict: it’s a really interesting movie because of how it was done. It’s not the greatest movie ever, and I can’t imagine it’s something I’d watch again of my own volition. But it is worth a watch.

I should mention that when the guy selling you a ticket asks if you have motion sickness, they ain’t kidding. It’s shot on a handheld camera and it feels like it. The general agreement is that presentation is what makes this movie. The Blair Witch comparison is inevitable (despite me never having seen the movie). And like Blair Witch, it’s pretty much inevitable that someone will try to make another monster movie in this style, and it won’t freaking work. Because this isn’t so much the start of a new genre as it is an experiment. (At least I hope someone doesn’t get the bright idea to make a Cloverfield 2 in the same vein as Blair Witch 2.)

Incidentally, the more apt comparison might be Dawn of the Dead. It appears to be a monster movie at first glance, but it’s truly a story of how the characters–real, human people, or at least not the action heroes we usually see in movies–react to a horrible situation. That it happens to be an utterly unrealistic and science-fictiony situation doesn’t really matter. In fact, the situation doesn’t really matter. They never explain it. It just is.

Presentation of the monster was well-done. They kind of do the whole Lovecraftian describe-it-don’t-show-it thing in the beginning–you see the destruction, you see the form, but somehow the camera’s always obscured or too shaky when they aim it right at the monster. (A realistic touch, I suppose.) You eventually get some clearer reveals to satisfy your curiosity (and to keep them artistically honest–let’s face it, if they didn’t actually show you the monster, it’s a bit of a rip-off). The reveal is a bit too much, in my opinion, but again, I’m from the Lovecraftian school of thought that says “there were obtuse angles where physics said there should be acute angles” and leaves it at that.

The set-up was perfect. They manage to get you to care about the characters, despite lacking the normal character development you’d get in a movie that wasn’t masquerading as home video footage. How they manage to do this is really too brilliant to describe here, but… it works well. (Although I’ll admit there’s one caveat, and I’m getting to that.) The lack of a score (yes, even during the credits) further enhances the sensation that this isn’t a movie, it’s documentation of an event.

And now we come to the stuff I didn’t like. The presentation is great, but it helps to mask the fact that a lot of the subplots are cheesy, and the plot is riddled with Comic Book Logic. That’s not really a bad thing. I like cheesiness as much as the next guy (well, if the next guy is a big sensitive woman lacking Man Points like me), and I can take a bit of Comic Book Logic in the right places. I just feel a little let down by the fact that the presentation obscures these things under a thin veneer of realism.

Let’s get the most obvious example out of the way first. The monster accidentally knocks off the head (just the head) of the Statue of Liberty, and it lands in front of the main characters. Like, directly in front of them. What are the odds of that?

You’ve seen it in the previews. You saw it on the posters. I swear, when they were writing this movie, they sat down and said, “You remember how everyone talked about the White House blowing up in Independence Day? We need to come up with something iconic like that. Now, what’s something instantly recognizable in New York City?” Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, it’s just the kind of thing that makes you think “cheesy action flick” (à la Independence Day) rather than “OMG teh greatest farking artistic masterpiece ever filmed and I want J. J. Abrams to bear my children” (what you read on the Internet).

Also, holy crap but there is a lot of product placement in the movie. See if you can spot the following: Nationwide Insurance, Nokia, Mountain Dew, Aquafina. That’s all I can remember within a 15 minute segment. I’m pretty sure there were more. We’re not quite talking the blatant lameness of Transformers‘ XBox 360 and Mountain Dew machines, but they kind of leap out of a movie that’s filmed like a real, on-the-spot documentary of an event.

And as for cheesiness, well, there’s a love story. And I don’t mind love stories. I am, to some extent, a sucker for a good love story, possibly to offset the gaping romantic void in my own life which will likely never be filled. But I never really expected this movie to pull out the staples of romantic drama. The guy and the girl that are destined for each other but don’t know how to relate. The guy who’s utterly depressed at the sight of the girl with someone else, but is determined to win her back. The guy who actually goes back for the girl despite certain death. The girl who’s surprised he risked his life to come back for her because of the way she treated him. It’s not bad, but it’s just not what I expected from the movie, and certainly not what the style of the film would imply. It’s one of those things that sort of breaks the suspension of disbelief, kind of like the Statue of Liberty head. Once you see it, you think “ok, yeah, this is a movie plot.”

But, as I said, you do care about the characters. And you really do want everything to work out like it does in the movies. Well, like it does in the romantic movies, I should say. Monster, disaster, and horror movies are all the same–pretty much everyone dies. You really don’t want it to end like that. There’s too many interesting characters trying to do too many interesting things. Frankly, I think I could have been happy with a version of the movie that had no monster, and just brought the situation at the party to a happy resolution.

Also, Comic Book Logic abounds. The main characters take more damage than a human should be able to take, and yet they don’t die. Not only that, but on occasion they miraculously regain their strength to save other half-dead comrades. This is the comic book/anime/movie law that characters do not become main characters by acting in exceptional ways; rather, characters have exceptional abilities because they are main characters. (By the same token, secondary characters fail at life because they are not main characters. I’m looking at you, every-fighting-anime-that-has-ever-been-made.) Not actually a flaw, but somewhat unexpected given the style.

I won’t even get into the soldier passively helping the main characters to go back into the city to search for friends who may already be dead. Seriously. People who are trained to provide leadership in crisis situations know better than this. At the very least, they’re going to do nothing; they’re not going to go out of their way to assist them. However, despite this being a big real-world no-no, Comic Book Logic says this should happen–the characters’ motives are pure and, hey, they’re the main characters, so the supporting cast should go out of their way to help them.

I guess my point is, it doesn’t quite live up to the hype as the bestest movie ever. It’s a highly enjoyable movie for what it is, and it is brilliantly executed. It’ll even spark some discussions (like this article!) about literary and cinematic technique. (Which is generally entertaining, mainly because it allows people like me–who know nothing about either of these things–to sound like an expert.) And seeing it on the big screen is certainly a different experience than waiting for DVD and watching it on the small screen.

So yeah. Spend the $8 on a ticket. Bring some friends so you can talk about it later. Have fun. Don’t expect much more than that.