Cloverfield makes a strong showing on the big screen
By Elizabeth Gartley
Staff writer
Despite the recent news items reporting that Cloverfield’s shaky, hand-held style of cinematography has made some moviegoers nauseous, I had no such problems when I saw the film in the theatre last weekend.
And it’s definitely a big-screen movie. Produced by J.J. Abrams – the executive producer of the action-packed TV shows Alias and Lost, Cloverfield has a true sense of adventure and suspense that isn’t common in cinema anymore.
The first act of the movie is dedicated to getting to know our characters and those little everyday dramas that don’t seem so important when disaster strikes. Beginning at a going-away party, one of our heroes, Hud, gets stuck with the task of documenting the party for our other hero, Rob, to take with him to Japan (nod to Godzilla? Perhaps.), when something begins attacking downtown Manhattan (not too far from the party), Hud quickly decides to continue documenting the night, explaining that people will want to know “how it went down.”
The fun thing about Cloverfield is that it took a very old concept (monster-based disaster movie in a major city) and gave it a whole new spin – a very first-person perspective. First-person narratives have always been problematic in cinema, but Cloverfield pulls it off. Since the characters are terrified and don’t know what’s going on, neither do we, the audience. As anyone who’s ever watched Lost known, Abrams is a master of never giving too much away. Because of course, gruesome is shocking, but not scary – the unknown, that’s what’s scary.
And while I don’t want to give anything away, I will say that the idea behind the movie is that the footage we (the audience) see is from the camera and its contents that are ‘recovered’ by the military after the attack.
Cloverfield is playing at the Houlton Temple Theatre and the Caribou Theatres tonight and tomorrow (Jan. 30 and 31) and is ‘coming soon’ to the Atlantic Cinemas in Woodstock.
Elizabeth “Liz” Gartley, of Houlton, has a BA in media studies from Emerson College in Boston. She has studied abroad in the Netherlands and Australia, and most recently interned at a production company in Hollywood. She can be reached online at egartley@gmail.com or leave a message for her at your local newspaper office.
