Cloverfield - or Why JJ Abrams Owes Me 75 Minutes of My Life Back

I originally posted this elsewhere right after Cloverfield came out. It's been getting good reviews, so I thought I'd drag it over here.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Cloverfield tried to build up some buzz with their teaser trailers: first by not revealing the name of the movie, then the one scene of the head of the Statue of Liberty crashing into the middle of the street. All well and good.
Unfortunately, that one scene is the best scene in the movie. That one scene has it all: action, explosions, tension, drama, shock – everything you might expect from a big budget “creature feature.”

Just don’t expect it in the rest of the movie.

And to those who think this is a monster movie, think again. This is a relationship movie set against the backdrop of a monster attacking New York. It should have been titled Love in the Time of Camera.

Oh yeah…that fucking handheld video camera. To all you aspiring directors out there…STEADICAMS EXIST FOR A REASON! It worked once, okay? But your budget is a tad larger than The Blair Witch gang’s. Hell…even a lack of a budget is no excuse. Peter Jackson once built his own steadicam for $15, and now he owns New Zealand, so make the investment, huh? But if you absolutely crave the cinéma vérité style, and feel your “artistic vision” would be compromised without it, use it as filler footage in the credits, or only in certain scenes for added impact. If you’re not making a porno, forcing an audience to sit through seventy-five minutes of “amateur” camera work is irresponsible.

Point #1: it’s illogical. If I’m in a survival situation, I’m going to be carrying a Smith & Wesson, not a Sanyo.
Point #2: it’s ridiculous to expect us to believe that this character dodged falling debris, avoided getting shot or run over by the military, fought mutant insects in a subway tunnel, crawled from one roof to another fifty-plus stories above the street, and survived a helicopter crash – all the while keeping the other characters (mostly) in frame – with a camera stuck to his face.
Point #3: the audience would occasionally like some deliberate focus on an event from start to finish. Breaking away in the middle only adds mystery up to a certain point. After that, we wonder what you’re hiding. Incomplete sets? Bad special effects? Lack of a script?

Speaking of the script…Look, I know that a certain amount of backstory has to be established if you want the audience to care about your protagonists, but twenty minutes is too much. That’s better than a quarter of your “action” movie where there’s NO ACTION! Guy 1 still has feelings for old girlfriend; guy 2 likes girl 2 who doesn’t like him; supportive friend. Six minutes, tops. We’re hip moviewatchers, okay? We’ve intuited that these five people will be together for most of the movie, so you don’t need to explore all of the social dynamics between them right up front. Let it come out naturally as determined by the events around them. By completely defining them right away, there’s no room for interesting growth or development, and if we don’t like your definition, we won’t care what happens to them.

Ironically, your tendency to indulge in over-explaining stopped after those first twenty minutes. Nothing else was explained in the movie. Nothing! Where did the creatures come from? Was Manhattan completely abandoned in the end? Was girl 2 shot, or did her head explode? What, exactly, does the title have to do with anything in the movie?

You need better writers.

Another question: Since all of these characters died, how is it that we’re seeing this video? Has anyone else noticed the trend lately to kill off the main characters in the movie? We spend between seventy-five and ninety minutes following their exploits, rooting for them, sharing their story…and then they die. I don’t know about you, but I want a little victory in my escapist fantasies, thank you. And if you absolutely cannot deliver a live protagonist at the end of the movie, make their death mean something, dammit. Give us some sort of resolution; don’t just turn the camera off. And DON’T try to be cute by putting the final scene after the credits. You’ve pissed me off by now, and as soon as I get a fade to black, I’m at home blogging about how awful your movie is. I just sat through an hour-plus of your dreck, I’m damn sure not sitting there another ten minutes in the hope that you knew what you were doing all along.

Here’s another tip: show the critter. You’ve made a monster movie. Great! Show it to us. A few shadowy shots and “corner-of-the-eye” scenes are fine. We like to be teased. But at some point, you’re going to have to go all the way and show us what your CG/FX department dreamed up. Not some five second shot from a “terrified” camera holder, but a real, honest-to-god, full-circle pan in technocolorific stereoscope and THX sound. Preferably, this will be before the creature wipes out all of the characters and the movie ends.

I sure hope this wasn’t supposed to be the beginning of a series, J.J., because you just squandered all of my goodwill and suspension of disbelief. I probably won’t even go see that space thing you’re putting together.