Cloverfield

Date night Sunday night found my wife and I at the megaplex watching Cloverfield. First reaction: meh. But as I’ve thought about it a bit more I’m finding myself wondering more about it. I never got personally involved with the characters. I didn’t connect with them, and as such, the story fell a bit limp as I was watching. But the monster was pretty cool, and that’s where my interest piqued.

***Spoiler alert! Stop reading if you don’t want details***

The monster had sort of a Predator face. I wanted more opportunity to analyze the monster, but you don’t get that chance. What you end up with is an image in your mind put together from the many bits from various screen shots. Even the full-view shots were vague. I can’t tell you how many legs it had; it seems to me it had really long forelegs, and really short rear legs, along with something I caught a glimpse of which might have been a horse’s hoof, or a penis or a mustache. I jest, but it’s really that convoluted. It was hard to get a real vivid image, and hard to build an image in your mind for what it actually looked like. I wanted to see how it moved, how it demolished the buildings, what it was doing and why it was here. I wanted more “why,” but there was no why. There was only speculation from the group of people who were caught up in the middle of it.

There were these spider things falling off the big monster and biting people, and evidently if you were unlucky enough to get bitten you would, within an hour or so, pop like you were a tomato with a firecracker in it. Seeing those things trying to eat people but not seeing the big one do anything other than smash a few buildings made me think that this big monster was just trying to figure out where it was, and that it had a bad case of lice. Maybe all the buildings were just getting smashed because it was trying to scratch that unreachable itch caused by these little bug things, which were really, really lame. At one point three of them descend upon our group of main characters, who just kick them a few times to death. They really didn’t look like that much of a threat, once you got past their appearance. So this big monster is plagued with a batch of lice, and is trying to get someone to give him a good scratch, and in the process, destroys Manhattan.

The ending, a sort of “I died” moment, left me very, very flat. I wanted to know where the monster was, what happened to Manhattan, and if more of these creatures had emerged in other cities. Did it come from outer space, or the sea? But those questions won’t get answered, and in the end all you get is a personal account of the attack from a group of people who die at the end. If you piece together the bits you get along the way, you’ll hear someone in a newscast early in the picture talking about a Japanese satellite that falls from orbit. Then, near the end of the film, you see a kind of flashback in which a couple is at Coney Island and you see a splash in the water nearby as something really big falls from the sky. The theory is, this satellite fell and woke the monster up.

One of my other big problems with this movie was the absolute invulnerability of the monster. There was one scene where a Stealth Bomber dropped what I presume to be thousand-pound bombs, which raked the monster across its back. It staggers, and then jumps up and keeps right on going. A single thousand-pound bomb would make a crater of a small town, and this thing suffered direct hits from multiple bombs. I know, it has a shell-like back and really thick skin. Yeah. So? I can understand bullets having no effect; you’ve got to have an awfully big gun to penetrate rhino or elephant hide, so that’s completely believable. And, since it’s so big, I can even believe that the tank shells aren’t doing any damage. But there comes a point where it’s just crazy: you’re telling me that armor-piercing, laser-guided bombs that will penetrate ten feet of battleship steel won’t even give it a little cut? That thing should have been bleeding, trailing it’s mile-long guts. But at the end of the movie it looked as fresh as if it had just sprung from the sea.

Overall it was an enjoyable flick, but there wasn’t any resolution and that always perturbs me, and I can’t, can’t, can’t believe we couldn’t even give it a little nick with all the might of the military hitting it full bore. Cloverfield, for all its plusses, suffers big time from these two little negatives.

And now, two things:

1. They’re talking about a sequel, which would be great, because I don’t think this movie is a stand-alone. It needs a sequel. I want a sequel. Especially if it give a bit more understanding of the events and the monster itself.
2. Evidently there’s something that happens after the credits run. Which sucks, because I was just ready to get on the road and left during the credits. I know they want you to watch the credits, but it really pisses me off when they add integral storyline stuff after them. The movie is over, you had your shot, now let it die. I guess I’m supposed to sit and watch the credits for every movie I see, right through to the point where it goes to static. I’m not that patient. I don’t care who the frigging costume designer was, or the main grip, key grip, fluffer or caterer. I. Don’t. Care. Now I find out there might be something integral after the credits that might be of interest to me. It’s very possible I’m pissed enough to skip the sequel, if there ever is one, because this makes me feel like you’re pulling one over on me. Bugger.

Lastly, I’ve looked at a lot of pics on the web trying to find one that most looks like the monster. This is the closest I’ve seen so far. Although, as I stated, the face looks more like the Predator (those red sacs on the side of its head swell like a balloon):