io9
All this rampant speculation about the Cloverfield monster has been distraction from the real thrill of the movie: Getting to watch a reenactment of 9/11 without all the scary political implications and the guilt over one's fascination with mass death. Like the disturbing original Gojira from 1954, Cloverfield is a monster movie whose purpose is nakedly therapeutic. New York must recover from the historical trauma of 9/11, and what better way than by containing its reenactment in a completely generic story whose monster-comes-to-town-monster-leaves-town narrative structure is as familiar as the fairy tales we heard as kids? (spoilers ahead)
Early in Cloverfield, when the monster first attacks New York, we see nothing of the giant beast — only the destruction it's leaving behind. As bloodied people stumble from the wreckage of leaning skyscrapers, dazed and covered in a thick layer of dust, one cannot help but recall the first, terrifying images that leaked from New York after the World Trade Center was hit. Most of it came from shaky, amateur footage. Likewise, Cloverfield is shot to look like it comes from a handheld camera dragged around by a group of rich twenty-somethings fleeing the wreckage of a party. So Cloverfield isn't just reenacting the attacks. It's reenacting TV news images of the attacks too. 
There is something genuinely shocking and brilliant about those moments in the film when you know you're watching scenes so clearly inspired by 9/11. It feels risky and wrong, and therefore you are profoundly relieved to see the comical, rubbery monster come on the scene, stomping and roaring and shedding lice the size of great danes. That creature, who does all the appropriate monstery things like resist conventional weapons and open its mouth really wide to reveal layers of weird teeth, is profound reassurance that we are firmly in the realm of fantasy. New York has not been attacked. It's just a silly dream about a monster so goofy-looking that you can hardly look at it without giggling. (Don't believe me? See the Cloverfield monster do its funky chicken dance in our morning spoilers.)
Director Matt Reeves knows what he's doing with his monster, bringing it blundering into the story whenever we get too close to remembering the real disaster that inspired it. In fact, one of the most genuinely horrifying scenes in the film has no monster at all. Several characters decide to rescue their friend from a sixty-story building that has collapsed against another one. Exhausted and in shock from watching their other friends die, they climb those sixty flights up the non-collapsed building, and jump into the slowly-crumbling one next door to get to their friend. Nothing is more terrifying than these vacant, tottering buildings whose blasted walls howl with wind.
And then, just as you start to contemplate those other blasted buildings, those other terrified people trapped inside them, the monster arrives and suddenly everything is fun, B-movie goodness. It takes smart writing and directing to make a movie like this, that pushes raw historical tragedy right into our eyeballs and then deftly distracts us with old-fashioned entertainment.
Sure, you can go see Cloverfield for the stomping and roaring, and you won't be disappointed. But when the movie's images of a destroyed New York fallen into chaos haunt you for days afterward, you'll start to realize that Reeves and his twangy-ass monster have given the U.S. its first great movie about 9/11.
Comments
I just returned from "Cloverfield: Stupid shit men do for hot women" and really enjoyed it. It looks like you guys haven't decided how to deal with spoilers yet.
@Eliot Phillips: actually i thought we all agreed that media that cannot stand on it's own merits does not deserve to be coddled with spoiler warnings
@tetracycloide: What is "media that cannot stand on its own merit"?
That's one way to look at it, Annalee, but I thought it was a good, rollicking tail.
I mean TALE.
Well, that, too..
I'm so pumped about seeing this tonight.
I'm not sure how to feel after reading the reviews...Sorry...I didn't read all of this article for fear of spoilers.
After all the pre-release bad mouthing from lots of people, and now it's art. Sigh. And ironic. Of course. We will see it tonight, as previously planned, hoping it won't spoil the popcorn..
It's getting good reviews, so that's a bad sign in my universe.
I am anticipating Spiderwick. An eight year old genius tells me the books are cool.. Aforesaid genius is busy devouring the Jack Vance Treasury, so her word is good enough for me.
I definitely found myself thinking that New Yorkers who were present on 9/11 might have a difficult time watching some of the scenes. That we live in a world where everyone knows exactly what it looks like when a building collapses unplanned in the middle of a major city is one of the scariest things about this movie.
"one cannot help but recall the first, terrifying images that leaked from New York after the World Trade Center was hit. Most of it came from shaky, amateur footage."
Did you live through a different 9-11 than the rest of us? I seem to recall the whole damn thing being right there on television. I can recall exactly where I was standing in the office when the morning anchors gasped as a plane flew into view and slammed into WTC2. The wife phoned within minutes.
Nothing was leaked. No amateur footage. It was on live network TV.
@unimodeler: Some of the professionals got a little shaky while they were running for their lives. I remember one shot of somebody just aiming the camera behind them as they were beating feet out of the dust cloud.
So monster comes, we don't see, destroys NY and the rest is about recovering in the aftermath? Ugh, sounds like that q3-rate movie I have about an earthquake that devastates NY in the first 10 minutes and then 85 more minutes of some dumb guy doing stupid shit of a hot chick as well. Think it was called Aftershock or something lame, but I did save some poor soul from buying it.
@zeppelined: I was there that day. I don't need to see Cloverfield to perform some cathartic voodoo on me and help me cope. I want to see a good story and from everything I hear, it's a good story. But I'm not looking for therapy, just a good use for my $10.
@SciFiCowboy: No, that would be an inaccurate description of the movie. The monster is present throughout (well, it comes and goes), and we do see it.
I read a couple of the prissier reviews this morning, who HATE the idea that this deals with 9/11 imagery and themes. And I thought, which movie, today, tells us more about how people felt about the fear of war at the dawn of the nuclear era? Sober, dull, responsible tearjerker "On the Beach"? Or "Godzilla"? That's "Godzilla," all the way.
Sometimes, pulp can deal with complexity far earlier than art can.
@NefariousNewt: I wasn't suggesting that it would be cathartic, nor that it was intended to be, nor that you would need it to be so. Rather, that someone who had lived through a terrifying plane crash, for example, might not enjoy watching a movie that depicts a very realistic plane crash. It's the same reason I don't like watching movies about high school.
@EncephelanetRepairHelperGuy: any media (short story, novel, movie, ect) that requires something other than actual quality of workmanship (it's own merit) to be interesting. in other words, anything that can be rendered uninteresting by learning more about it isn't really worth spending money or time on.
in this case i was refering specificly to cloverfield where most of the pre-release interest in the movie stemmed from the fact that the identity of the monster was not yet known.
It was a little bit difficult to watch the scenes near the beginning with all of the obviously 9.11 inspired imagery, but that's fine. movies shouldn't just entertain you and never challenge you emotionally.
aside from that, i bought just about everything in the movie, totally. its like, hud's bad jokes...i see that, the whole "lets do something completely ridiculous like save the woman i love because really, what do any of us have left?" thing...i'm there with ya.
about the only thing i didn't buy was the monster, and even then...if you accept the fact that a giant sea monster thing that sheds head crabs +5 is attacking new york and these people are experiencing that, it all adds up just fine. i mean...what would you do?
good film, good monster film. well done.
Personally, when the yuppies form Voltron at the end is the best part.
"a reenactment of 9/11 without all the scary political implications and the guilt over one's fascination with mass death."
Funny you should mention.
One year after 9/11, and my first September living in NYC, I had a dream about a big metropolitan disaster. It featured the most realistic explosions I've ever felt in a dream (or ever?). We were on a monorail headed out of town, and we rounded a corner to find... dinosaurs. A T-Rex shaking a busload of people into a giant tar pit, a stegosaurus worrying its horn into the side of a building, a brontosaurus stomping and smashing. Real panic set in, and I woke up with a scream.
...So should I sue the Cloverfield boys?
I heard all the moving cam can be tough for folks that have motion sickness...
Hm, I might just wait for the DVD version.
@IrisMR: It was a bit dizzying. I had to look away at times. My wife almost hurled.
I was here in NY during 9-11 also about 4 blocks away when the towers fell. Saw the movie last night and yes it was a terrifying reminder but I really did enjoy the film, especially the snips of the tape they were supposedly taping over coming out here and there
after Katrina I thought I needed two things most, a shot gun and a motorcycle
think about the millions of people in your way
What happened to the imagination? Sci Fi, fantasy and horror should investigate contemporary issues and fears by cloaking them behind visions of the future, alternate realities, spectral terrors etc. I think its downright immoral to talk about 911 without creating a situation in which religion, politics, and economics can be speculated. As if a monster is scarrier then the wars governments and terrorists engage in. Where's Paul Verhoeven when you need 'em. Bring back Starship Troopers.
@learnesp: Reminds me of a report I did last year where I read about the entire Cold War theme behind Starship Troopers.
But about this 9/11 business, I honestly think everyone's being a bit paranoid in linking this movie with it. I know this article puts a better perspective on it, but I still think it's silly.
um...actually no.
Cloverfield is simply just a better Godzilla movie - which is an honorific! I just can't wait until Mothera makes her appearance in Cloverfield 5!
I think it's also worthy of note that NYC was being destroyed in apocalyptic disaster films a long time before 9/11. Charlton Heston didn't ride by a half-buried Hollywood sign in the sand, after all.
Osama might be easier to find if he were a giant tadpole-beast.
@NcSchu: i agree on the 9/11 paranoia. monsters have attacked new york in films for decades now, were the previous monster flicks metaphorically prophetic? it's all just hubris to me, new york is the setting for these films the same reason london and tokyo are settings for these films. they are all major urban centers that are globally recognized in popular culture as being representative of the countries in which the are located, nothing more, nothing less.
hey, godzilla worked for japan. everything old is new again, again.
I haven't read the whole article due to spoilers but isn't the plot a little too similar to 'Lost' - just a different setting?
I just got back from the movie, and was looking for stuff on the movie to read in order to help me digest what I have just seen, and I come across this page. I don't particularly agree with this point of view, but if and when I see the movie again, I'm going to keep this in the back of my mind.
looking back and digesting, I can completely see where you are coming from, and interpreted it this way. (except for the monster looking hokey. I like the design) this is a different perspective than I had, and it definately opened my eyes a bit more.
i'm not gonna say that it was a good movie, but i certainly want to recognize achievement. i'd heard mixed reviews and was trying to keep my expectations low to avoid disappointment. turns out i was pleasantly surprised- it didn't suck nearly as much as i thought it would.
i saw the splash at the end, not the radio bit after the credits, but those are just two examples of what pissed me off about the film. i get that it was an exploration of 9.11, but there's been more closure around that then there was in this film. what happened before? what happens next? exactly what the f**k is going on here? the movie had none of that. it took me into the moment, and then just left me there. I give full credit to the fimmakers for accomplishing something inventive, but this is not some stupid season finale.
and i hang my head in shame for being one of the weak who got nailed by motion sickness. it started with the bridge, and i eventually had to step out of the theatre to settle the plumbing. there were only two of us in the room, i can't possibly imagine sitting through that in a theatre with several hundred other people.
Between Annalee's cogent review and Manhola Dargis' lazy diss of it, I really can't wait to see this thing!
@dave the wet sprocket: One of the viral sites (1-18-08.com) seems to suggest something of a more conclusive ending.
I still say that Statue of Liberty head was way too small.
That is all.
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