“Okay, just to be clear here, our options are: die here, die in the tunnels, or die in the streets. That pretty much it?”
I had mixed feelings about Cloverfield when it was first released. It seemed like it would be right up my alley, being a mash-up of two guilty pleasures of mine – found-footage and kaiju films. And that teaser trailer with the head of the Statue of Liberty crashing into a city street? That had my expectations set pretty high. I remember walking out of the theater feeling like I didn’t really get the best of either type of movie, though. If I’m in the mood for found-footage I’m generally looking for something smaller and rougher. If I’m in the mood for some kaiju action I’m looking to see the monsters – preferably monsters fighting each other.
Not that I hated it, I just wasn’t wowed and I didn’t feel like I needed to see it again. I did, somehow, end up with a Blu-ray of Cloverfield – I think I got it as part of a ‘buy 2, get 1 free’ promotion, but I’m not sure what the other films were. (Maybe Dark City and In the Mouth of Madness?) When Cloverfield Lane was released I dug it out and rewatched it, somehow expecting the films to be directly related. (Which, I guess they kind of are, but not really?) I enjoyed it a lot more on the small screen, enough that I put it into my list of top 10 found-footage films. I still wanted to see more of the monster, though.
It’s probably been a decade since I last watched the film, but this week – in my blurry, recovering from Covid, mental state – I thought a shaky cam monster flick was just the thing. Maybe I’ll rewatch all the Cloverfield films.
Maybe not.
The Medium
I have the original blu-ray from Paramount. It’s as good as you can expect for a found-footage movie from 2008. (Okay, maybe better than you’d expect – somebody sprang for the really good camera.) There are a couple of 4k releases, which always baffles me with a found-footage film. I mean, the verisimilitude is at least partly based on how non-professional and low-quality everything looks. Doesn’t 4k defeat that purpose? I guess Blu-ray does as well. Anyway, the release has a handful of extras, including a commentary track.
For streaming, Cloverfield is currently available for subs on Paramount, AMC+ and Showtime and can be rented or purchased on AppleTV, Microsoft and Amazon. If you’ve got a service like YouTubeTV you can probably get it on demand.
The Movie
Cloverfield is basically a Godzilla movie entirely from the point of view of the people running away and screaming “Godzilla!” A giant monster attacks New York City and a small group of people tries to rescue a friend and escape. The gimmick is that it’s all seen through a hand-held camera. Found footage kaiju film kinda sums it up.
The movie is elevated from your standard found-footage fare on a couple of fronts – first, it actually takes the time to build a bit of a relationship with the characters. Even the cameraman – Hud (T.J. Miller) – gets some character moments, which is something of a rarity in found-footage movies. The cameraman is never focused on – otherwise you’ll start to wonder why this person is still shooting video. Second – this movie had a budget. I know that sounds stupid – all movies have a budget – but I mean it had a BUDGET. Like $25 million worth of budget (roughly $36.5 million today). So no dodgy CGI monster that shows up and ruins all the atmosphere in the last ten minutes.
The plot is still pretty threadbare – there’s just not enough room to develop a real deep story when the rationale you’re running with is “he was filming testimonials at a going-away party and is still filming things for… uh, posterity.” It boils down to “guy realizes the woman he loves is in jeopardy, heads into danger to save her.” The filmmakers do employ a neat trick to add some depth – the tape used in the camera has been used before, and as Hud stops and starts recording the camera rolls the tape a few seconds forward, allowing us glimpses of the film that was recorded previously. It’s not a lot, but it provides a few character notes that help make some choices more believable.
A giant monster movie stands or falls on the quality of its monster, and on this front Cloverfield succeeds quite well. I remember being disappointed when I saw it in the theater because I never got a clear view of the monster. This actually ends up working to the film’s advantage, because it’s much more realistic and terrifying to see a giant limb come down on a car in front of you or to see tank shells exploding against a the side of a creature mostly obscured by buildings. The few glimpses of the entire monster – primarily from a helicopter – are slightly disappointing. (A scene in which the characters are moving between two buildings toppled against each other while the monster approaches is, in comparison, pretty freakin’ awesome.)
The cinematography suffers from a certain inconsistency. Sometimes it’s pretty obvious that the camera is being held by an amateur – the shakiness so bad that some people suffered nausea and migraines in the theater – and sometimes is just as obviously being held by a pro that manages to make sure all the important bits are in-frame and in-focus just when they need to be. I’m so used to that sort of shifting quality in other found-footage movies at this point that I barely registered the changes (though I did have to look away from the screen during the escape from the Brooklyn Bridge).
The ending falls down a bit, as is the case with almost all found-footage movies. I would have ended it with the final monster attack, myself – but I understand that it would undercut the whole “footage found in Central Park by the military” wraparound element. Still, I was way more invested in Hud than I was in Rob and Beth, despite the bits of previously taped content, and I felt his loss a little more than the others.
One sidebar – when this movie came out it was seven years after 9/11 and I felt that connection far more keenly back then. The shots of collapsing buildings, dust and crowds running for safety had a distinctly different weight to them when I first saw them. I never imagined that there would be enough of a distance from those events that seeing visual reminders of them would have less of an emotional impact – but here it is, and I wasn’t immediately flashing back to that day.
The Bottom Line
Cloverfield is still pretty damn fun, even sixteen years later. The found-footage elements play much better with the giant monster elements than I remember (though man, that shaky footage does get a bit much once in a while), and you care just enough about the characters to be invested in their fate. The few glimpses of the monster are scary, though not as scary as finding out what happens when you get bitten by one of the little monsters. Yeah, I care less about the main characters than I do about the cameraman, and yeah the camerawork is occasionally too good for what it purports to be, but it’s still a great example of both a found-footage film AND a monster movie.
