Stylish 'Cloverfield' gives bumpy, hand-held view

By Chris Kaltenbach | Sun Reporter

January 18, 2008

(B-) Cloverfield is The Blair Witch Project for the post-Sept. 11 generation, a first-person, hand-held camera exploration of terror that's long on style and technique, short on substance and plot.

Like Blair Witch, Cloverfield purports to be a found videotape. Only this time, in keeping with an America where terror has become all too real, the tape reveals not ephemeral ghosts, but flesh-and-blood invaders. Introduced as some sort of government exhibit, found in the area known as "Central Park" (their quote marks, not mine), the tape opens at a going-away party for a stubble-bearded 20-something named Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who's on his way to Japan to become vice president of some unnamed company. Chronicling the evening - reluctantly, until he realizes a video camera at a party is a great way to meet chicks - is Rob's gentle doofus of a best friend, Hud (T.J. Miller).

For a while, things go along as they do at a party: Friends gossip, guests drink too much, little minidramas - most of the he-said, she-said variety - play out in the corners. Chronicling all this is Hud, untrained but persistent with the camera. Much of that persistence is directed at the lovely Marlena (Lizzy Caplan), whose indifference only fuels his desire. But to his credit (and Cloverfield's good fortune), he never turns the camera off.

Then, there's a jolt, the lights flash on and off, and things get real bad real fast. Within seconds, the head of the Statue of Liberty comes hurtling through the sky. And it only gets worse from there.

Seems Manhattan has been invaded by a Big Ugly, and within minutes, the military is on hand, ordering everyone out of town. How did the military get there so fast? Got me. One limitation of Cloverfield is that we never learn more than what Hud is able to see with his camera, or provide via his impromptu narration.

Then again, that's part of the point; Cloverfield is not a story in itself, but an artifact of a much bigger story that, conveniently, the filmmakers don't have to worry about very much. The result is a film that's breathless and jarring, but not exactly creepy or even all that terrifying. In some ways, its sense of reality diminishes its effectiveness. As Rob, Hud, Marlena and mutual friend Lily (Jessica Lucas) set out to find Rob's childhood best-bud, we get shards of story line and snippets of images, but little real information.

On the plus side, Cloverfield has not only a big-time monster, but hordes of baby critters the monster is constantly dropping, recalling the queen alien in James Cameron's Aliens. They're nasty little buggers, especially when - in another nod to Cameron's film - they turn up trailing our heroes through a darkened subway tunnel. And the film's overriding sense of the unknown ratchets up the suspense, if not the terror.

Cloverfield is the brainchild of producer J.J. Abrams, who has brought us Mission: Impossible III and the TV series Felicity (this film is nothing if not Felicity meets Godzilla), Alias and Lost. Even if this latest project is something of a misfire, it's a brave one that bodes well for his next project: a re-imagination of the Star Trek franchise, slated for this year.

Still, that jittery, hand-held camera can get irritating, if not physically unsettling; motion sickness is a real possibility. And casting the film almost entirely with fresh-faced unknowns has pluses and minuses. Without big-name stars, one's never certain which character is going to make it through to the end. But the absence of recognizable faces makes it hard to keep track of who's still around.

Not that there seems to be all that many. Unlike in Blair Witch, the victims this time are not a bunch of talky teens out on a witch hunt, but the entirety of Manhattan Island. True, the invader is a big ugly monster, not anything human or realistic, so maybe we shouldn't carry that post-Sept. 11 theme too far. Still, in both its scope and its spirit, not to mention its grim picture of a city under attack, Cloverfield is clearly intended as horror of a very different kind.

>>>Cloverfield (Paramount Pictures) Starring Michael Stahl-David, T.J. Miller, Jessica Lucas. Directed by Matt Reeves. Rated PG-13. Time 84 minutes.

chris.kaltenbach@baltsun.com