I won't be the first to say that the new horror flick 'Cloverfield' is a cross between Godzilla and The Blair Witch Project because that just about sums it up. It's an enormously interesting concept that works about as well as can be expected. It could have been a lot better. In fact, it should have been a lot better. Unfortunately they just used one camera.
I'm going to have to save my enthusiasm for a multi-perspective drama up for Vantage Point which looks much more like an adult drama. The twentysomethings in Coverfield are unbearably vapid and crippled to the point at which I'm considering whether or not J J Abrams himself has any real sense of transcendent courage beyond that which is motivated for people at arms reach. In his increasingly claustrophobic 'Lost' series, everything becomes more and more like a soap opera and less and less like any survival drama. Then again perhaps he has reached the limit at which survival drama remains interesting. Survival for what? Survival of what? Everything is all very highschool - nobody seems to get beyond their friends and their parents and their own philosophy of life. Isn't it odd that what has evolved on Lost's island never goes beyond the conspiracy? JJ Abrams people never strive to form a more perfect union, establish justice or insure domestic tranquility for posterity, only for themselves.
That is why it occurs to me that nobody in Cloverfield ever weeps for the city. That the protagonist of this flick only discovers that he is in love (because of what, a trip to Coney Island?) when buildings start collapsing. How could we ever expect such an empty suit to do anything but run and sweat and thoughtlessly drag his equally flummoxed pals through mortal danger for the possibility of a last kiss?
Somewhere in our literature there must be a devastating critique of the romantic fool who barely understands his own passions and mindlessly walks through a menagerie-life until he stubs his toe upon reality. Then facing that, dives directly with passion for the very first time into the full flame of his romantic fantasy. Until such time as that passage is discovered, you have Cloverfield and this review.
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