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Rating:
"Cloverfield" is yet another film about a giant monster destroying the city, another film about citizens fleeing terrified through the flames, another film where American soldiers intervene to save the city from the giant beast, yet despite the cliché being worn out, overused, and rehashed... this film has a brilliant and (almost) original idea! Showing all the events through the perspective of an amateur video. A more or less innovative choice (the idea was used in "The Blair Witch Project", but unlike it, "The Blair" was a colossal hoax, pretending to be a real documentary) that has already divided the audience in half, there are no half measures, the reactions are twofold: cursing all the saints in the calendar at the end of the film demanding a ticket refund, or leaving the theater satisfied for having seen something finally different from the usual Hollywood movie pattern.
There is to say that, whether you like it or not, in this film there is a touch of art. The more distracted people might think that the scenes are actually shot by a home camera used by an amateur filmmaker, but in reality, it is not so, just like in the Tarantino "Grindhouse", here the work of distorting the images and the amateur trash effect is recreated artfully in the production room. The footage is shot in high definition and then digitally "dirtied" in the editing phase, if you look at it from this perspective, you cannot help but admire the technical effort that has been undertaken. To appreciate such a product, it must be seen for what it is: a purely entertaining product! The usual man-eating monster movie seen through the recordings of a home camera. Viewed through this lens, the film entertains, amuses, and on more than one occasion even frightens! The scenes of panic are effective precisely because they are filmed in real-time (so to speak) and are shown from the perspective of the operator filming, the sounds are not the usual "special fx" of a Star Wars kind, but very much resemble the real sounds that accompanied the real footage of the twin towers or other catastrophes filmed live, the screams of people, the rubble, the cries of children, the police sirens, the crowds fleeing from the dust raised by the collapsed buildings, if you remove the computer-generated monster, it truly seems like watching terrorist footage filmed for real! And that's precisely the film's strong point, taking a video of September 11 and inserting Godzilla instead of the hijackers! A tasteless choice? For many, yes, but it works great!
The real flaw of this film is that by striving for its extreme realism... it ends up not being realistic. The technical effort is excellent but not enough to avoid paradoxical scenes, during the viewing of the film, any slightly focused viewer will notice a series of outstanding absurdities:
- The camera's battery never runs out! (Long-lasting battery? I don't know... it seems equally absurd to me!)
- The videomaker always finds himself in the right place at the right time, the camera shakes due to his inefficiency... and yet... somehow... he always manages to frame close-ups of the actors, to follow the story step by step, to continue filming even in the most dizzying chases, to follow the monster in its every movement.... Sure, for being just a simple clumsy guy with a camera in his hand, he's really good! Keep it up, you'll become the new Orson Welles! (.... Absurd!!!!)
- There are elements that clash with the film's realistic setting... and they are the actors! I challenge anyone, even the most insensitive person in the world, to maintain mono-expressive faces throughout the duration of a tragedy... in a REAL footage! Our favorites limit themselves only to breathe heavily (but it's not them... they are the good dubbers) and run throughout the film.... (absurd!!)
But aside from these "trivialities" and other pearls of involuntary Trash, the film manages for better or worse to entertain the viewer. If you have a delicate stomach, you won't last twenty minutes! The camera moves up and down continuously, and after a while, you get a sense of seasickness. There are dead scenes where nothing happens and it seems like watching a wedding video, but suddenly the calm is broken by sudden tragedies that in more than two cases make even the most disappointed viewer jump from their seat, there are two really great sequences! The scene in the subway with the monster bugs (the giant's offspring) chasing our unfortunate heroes, very claustrophobic and with a heart-pounding rhythm, and the spectacular shot of the escape with the helicopter crashing to the ground, with the internal camera transporting the viewer inside the helicopter giving them the real sensation of falling. I have to say even the most critical of critics cannot remain indifferent to such a gimmick.
Ultimately, it is not a masterpiece, nor even a great film, I would define it more like an experience! A new way of seeing monster cinema, a nice find that knows how to entertain and brings a breath of fresh air to this American cinema, made only of schematics and didacticism. Much better than The Blair Witch Project, more original than that cinematographic disaster that was the 1998 "Godzilla" remake, and certainly more original than the monotony Hollywood offers us.
To be seen only in the cinema, and only once! As I already said... it is a "cinematic experience" that must be lived. For better or for worse.
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