Cloverfield

I can't really decide if I feel old that Cloverfield is already 10 years old, or if I'm more disappointed that I've waited 10 years and this Twilight Zone-likeCloverfield universe still doesn't totally feel like it's gotten off the ground the way I've expected from JJ Abrams. I'll talk more about the larger picture stuff that I don't think we ever really conceived in 2008 from this movie later and instead talk about the movie Cloverfield just as a standalone movie and how it has aged in the 10 years since it's release.

Cloverfield centers around government seized found footage. The footage was originally captured by a group of friends as they throw a going away party for their friend Robert (played by Michael Stahl-David) as he gets ready to leave for Japan.

His friend Hud (oddly played by TJ Miller in his big screen debut) has the video camera and he is assigned to get people's good bye messages to Rob before he leaves. Underneath the whole movie is a romance plot line between Rob and his friend Beth (played by Odette Yustman). It serves more as character motivation later on and while paper thin, isn't the worst addition to this movie and is luckily overshadowed by the sudden horrific events that happen on that night.

The party is going relatively smoothly, some character drama is unfolding, when suddenly an earthquake shakes the city and the main characters, Rob, Hud, Rob's brother Jason (played by Mike Vogel), his girlfriend Lily (played by Jessica Lucas), and another girl at the party named Marlena (played by Lizzy Caplan go to see what happened.

The rest of the movie is this group of characters trying to escape from New York as it is terrorized by a giant skyscraper sized monster and the small little alien monsters that came with it. And of course, all it is captured by TJ Miller on a video camera.

First off, I have to say, watching this movie ten years later is weird especially considering that this was TJ Miller's first movie, EVER. He did a little bit of TV the year before, but this was his break out role and nobody ever talks about that. Partly because he's behind the camera the entire time but you hear his voice... the entire time. Now I think I get it. He's slightly annoying but also slightly charming in that typical TJ Miller fashion. I'm not totally sure how his career blew up more than everyone else's in this movie. With the exception of Lizzy Caplan, I don't really hear about any of the other actors in this movie. It's just weird that the biggest celebrities from this movie is the sexual abuser from Deadpool and Lindsey Lohan's goth friend from Mean Girl.

The second thing I'll talk about is the found footage format of the movie. Now I'm not a huge fan of the style anyways but I do have to give the movie a little bit of credit. I recognize that it definitely wasn't the first found footage movie but I think it was this movie and Paranormal Activity in 2007 that really started off the found footage trend that people got so sick of. I'll talk a little bit more about that later, but I actually didn't mind it for this film.

The thing that always bugs me about these found footage movies is that it never makes a whole lot of sense why people are filming these events. For this movie it kind of works and the truth is, its not something that breaks the film, even when it doesn't make sense.

The camera work and the plot at the beginning, for the most part makes sense and feels pretty diegetic. With the exception of some campy acting, it makes sense why someone would have a camera at the start of the film. As the film progresses though it stops making a whole lot of sense why TJ Miller is filming. There is something to be said about the obsession we have with our phones and the way we film and document everything even in the middle of a disaster and that's some probably unintended commentary that I didn't notice the first time around, but I really doubt that was the subliminal message Matt Reeves or JJ Abrams was trying to get across in their monster movie. It also doesn't rationalize a whole lot of why he keeps filming as he's running for his life from a monster.

There's a point in the movie where TJ Miller's friend asks him if and why he's still filming and Miller gives the shittiest line in the movie, "People are gonna want to see what happened." Again, it does not make sense how Miller's career sky rocketed so much more than almost everyone in this film...

But the truth is, I don't want to make a huge deal out of the fact that the found footage thing only sort of works in this movie. It gives the movie a unique format and at least at the time, it felt different than other monster movies out there. I'm really glad found footage films ahve gone out of style because its been overused. But it's not done horribly in this film at all. It's shakey, there are times where you don't know whats going on and probably get a headache, but I think it works.

Larger picture though, I do think this movie gets a little bit of unwarranted shit. I think it mainly comes from the fact of hindsight on two fronts. The first and most obvious is how much people hate found footage movies now. Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity started off a horrible trend for the next 5 to 8 years where A LOT of horror movies were found footage movies and they were bad... and that got really old, really quick. But I think it also gets a bad reputation on how disappointing the whole Cloverfield franchise has been.

Again, think about the fact that this movie has been out for 10 years. To be fair, I don't think we really had the idea that Cloverfield was a franchise until 2016 when 10 Cloverfield Lane came out but again, 10 years and what do we have to show for this "franchise". Two initial movies that were unique and felt more like cousins that direct sequels, and a direct to Netflix film that I remember being better than I think a lot of people give it credit for. But where is this going?

I honestly don't even know how to talk about this franchise because we still don't know anything about it or if its actually happening. There's a recent movie called Overlord that I think initially was supposed to be a Cloverfield film set in World War 2 and then after the failure of The Cloverfield Paradox, they took the Cloverfield name out of it.

I think a part of me wants Cloverfield to be a franchise but it's hard to really define what that franchise would be. Would it be a Twilight Zone/Black Mirror Anthology series only loosely connected by the name Cloverfield? Is it a monster horror franchise? Nobody really knows, and I think that's where this movie gets a little more shit than it deserves.

On it's own, Cloverfield is a unique film. I also remember it having a really unique viral marketing campaign.

Now I can't speak to that viral marketing campaign 10 years later but I see that as something beneficial for me to judge this movie on its merits, not the hype. And as it stands, I enjoyed re-watching Cloverfield. The movie is pretty short so even if you're not a fan, it goes by really quick and it does the monster science fiction genre pretty well and in a unique way. I think looking at a greater scale, this was a weird movie to start a franchise on which maybe makes me think that that was never the plan. But if you haven't seen it in a while, check out Cloverfield again. I do recommend it after 10 years.

But those are my thoughts on Cloverfield. What did you think? Does it hold up 10 years later? Where would you want a Cloverfield franchise to go? Do you want a franchise? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!