[HorrorScience] Cloverfield – Monstrous (2008)

Today everyone knows J. J. Abrams, because he is behind series like Alias either lost and movies like Star Trek (2009) and episode 7 of Star Wars.

Surely there are those who consider Abrams a visionary and one of the most brilliant minds of the new millennium, but as far as I am concerned he has never offered me anything worth remembering, which is strange considering that I am a big fan of star Trek and Star Wars and that he was eagerly awaiting the films that he directed, without having any type of negative expectation for being his product.

However, the Abrams project (or his company, Bad Robot Productions) that I liked the least is cloverfield, a film that had an advertising campaign so viral that many of you surely remember, although there really isn't that much to remember, at least as far as the film's plot is concerned.

During a party organized to say goodbye to the protagonist (who will soon start a new life in another country) a roar is heard and catastrophes begin to happen. When they go out into the street, they see enormous destruction in the distance (and the head of the Statue of Liberty flying) so everyone flees. The person responsible for everything seems to be a huge, deformed monster that roams freely through the city.

Unfortunately, the protagonist will try to reunite with the love of his life, with whom he had argued at the party, so he will travel around the city in any way he can to get to her.

cloverfield it's a movie difficult to catalog or value, but I already say from this moment that It makes me very dissatisfied every time I see it..

I'm not a big fan of movies shot as if they were real by some character, which became so famous after Blair Witch Project. Despite this, if the film is worth it and has good development and interesting characters, it is not difficult for me to enjoy them (for example, Troll Hunter I liked it). However cloverfield It is never intended to be a movie., it is simply a set of scenes that try to make us see what would happen to any person in the event of the appearance of a giant monster in their city.

The idea itself is quite good and could have worked if it weren't for some specific drawbacks. The first is that with the excuse of recording and realism, they give us a huge number of dead minutes (it takes about 20 before anything happens) and timely cuts. The second reason is that the fact that everything is recorded by one of the characters means that They will never show specific scenes of the monster, except for some that last just a few seconds.

And the third is that It is very difficult to consider the characters' actions at specific moments realistic., especially when the guy recording can record everything, even the military (the first thing they would do is confiscate your camera) even going so far as to record a random soldier ignoring his superior's orders to help the protagonists (once again, allowing himself to be recorded without any problem). Nor is the heroic attitude of the entire group of protagonists excessively realistic, or that a person can walk through the subway tunnels opening doors at will (and that all the lights are on when the subway facilities are closed), not to mention the number of scenes in which the protagonists are less than 10 meters from the monster and by running a little they get to safety, or when they survive extreme moments such as the fall of a helicopter where they are traveling, come on, in that sense the realism is as null as that of an action movie standard.

To this we must add other inconveniences, such as the entire film being “a shaking camera” and that at no time does the plot advance, they are simply things that happen without any intention of giving us more information than what we know in the 20th minute of the film: that there is a giant monster breaking everything.

The realistic style is positive for many of the scenes and there are many moments that are tense and terrifying, the special effects were very good at the time and have not aged at all badly, but everything falls halfway because of what was said before: there is no intention of giving us a movie at any point. The style of this film is so particular that If you watch the whole thing or watch just 30 minutes of any part of it, you get the same thing. and that for me is a big point against it.

However cloverfield It did something that few films have achieved: that the majority audience noticed a movie about giant monsters. Unfortunately, all that attention was achieved in a similar way to how the film works: without showing anything and without the intention of doing so, since its viral advertising was based on nothing concrete, showing only sounds and little else (it reminds me of the Simpsons episode where everyone talks about Gabbo without knowing what or who he is).

Tengo que admitir que es una jugada inteligente, pero me habría gustado que ese recurso se quedase exclusivamente en la publicidad y en la película nos diesen algo más convencional, no en forma, sino en fondo. No necesito que me digan de donde viene el monstruo, ni nada por el estilo, habría bastado con incluir algún tipo de conclusión que aliviase el hecho de ver a unos tipos corriendo por la ciudad sosteniendo una  cámara durante una hora y media.

Mucha gente adora esta película, pero a mí me provoca más insatisfacción que interés y eso es una pena teniendo en cuenta que se trata de un género que aprecio y que generalmente está condenado a películas de nula repercusión o bajo presupuesto, alternadas por algún intento de blockbuster cada muchos años que se olvida a la misma velocidad a la que llega.  cloverfield podía haber marcado una diferencia, incluso con su estilo “cámara en mano y mostrando poco” pero creo que se quedó a medio camino de todo, al menos para mí.

Some curiosities:

• En la película hay algunas escenas que ocultan fotogramas, por ejemplo cuando el helicóptero donde van los protagonistas se choca, hay un fotograma de la película king kong (1933). Otras escenas también ocultan secretos, por ejemplo en la grabación que sale justo en el final de la película, se puede ver a lo lejos como un objeto cae al agua (supuestamente es el origen del monstruo).
• A J.J. Abrams se le ocurrió la idea de hacer la película durante un viaje a Japón, donde vio la gran cantidad de juguetes dedicados a monstruos gigantes como Godzilla y pensó en hacer algún tipo de película de ese género.
• La campaña de marketing de cloverfield se inició con un tráiler sin nombre para crear especulaciones, que se aumentaron con un montón de material desperdigado por diferentes webs. Llegado a un punto era muy difícil saber que era oficial o inventado (se rumoreó que la película estaba relacionada con historias de Lovecraft o incluso con Godzilla). Ese era el efecto que buscaban los productores: que la gente especulase y se montase su propia película para finalmente ir al cine por pura curiosidad.
• Para potenciar la campaña de marketing viral se utilizaron algunas marcas comerciales ficticias como la bebida Slusho! (también aparecida en otras producciones de Abrams como Alias) o una una compañía japonesa petrolífera llamada Tagruato.
• Existe un manga que expande el universo de esta película, se llama Cloverfield/Kishin