Run, Little Bird, run!

If you click for the full-size, you’ll see the fortune says “An alien of some sort will be appearing to you shortly.”

Best. Fortune. EVER.

The plot is simple: five twenty-something New Yorkers are trying to rescue a friend in Manhattan in the midst of a giant monster’s rampage through the city. They happen to be carrying a camera, and it is through this camera that the entire flick is shot. The plot isn’t terrible, and the characters are a lot more interesting than the Blair Witch characters, but the first-person business gets real old, real quick for me. If you hated Blair Witch, you will probably be just as frustrated with Cloverfield.

At this point, if you haven’t seen the flick and you want to avoid spoilers, then stop reading. Maybe you can check out some great artwork instead.

I completely understand what JJ Abrams and director Matt Reeves were trying to accomplish with the way the flick is told and shot, so anyone wanting to defend the flick by telling me “you don’t get it, Mike!” can just save the keystrokes. My beef with these flicks is the way they go out of their way to make the film look poorly shot. For example, during an action sequence, the last thing I want to see is long segments of running feet or spinning kaleidoscopes of blurry light.

Why couldn’t the flick be shot by embedded journalists? Why not an experienced camera man and a quick-thinking reporter interviewing refugees and soldiers they encounter rather than a pinhead amateur? This was made particularly obvious when the characters go into an electronics store and the guy with the camera points it at a television and we get to watch the news with him for a few moments. Instead of making a big-budget Blair Witch, why not cobbling together disparate news sources and amateur video to tell the larger tale?

Then, of course, the flick would be about the monster, not the love story between the leader of the group and his girlfriend trapped in a fallen building on the other side of the city. Again, compelling characters, and there are some great touches such as when Mom calls the main character. However, if I’m going to a monster movie, I’d like to see more than just two seconds at a time of said monster. They try to make up for this with a shot at the end, but it’s so obviously CGI and cheesy that I felt like I was watching Disney’s Dinosaur rather than a monster movie.

If you hate loose ends, especially the loose ends Abrams leaves us with on Lost, you’ll have another reason to hate Cloverfield. It makes sense not to share the monster’s origin in the movie because the characters have neither the time nor the resources to figure this out (determined folks can pick up clues at the Slusho website and by following its links), but it’s the rest of the things that go unresolved that bother me.

First, one character gets on a chopper and is whisked away. Did they make it or not? Is there any reason they couldn’t be telling us the story? Or that this character couldn’t be used in a sort of epilogue as they’re debriefed by the military?

Second, another character is dragged away by the military and quarantined. We get a spray of blood and the camera’s gone. What happened? Did something come out of this character, like a chestburster from Alien? Did some pustule explode? Did the doctor cut the character open in emergency surgery?

Last and most disconcerting is we don’t even know what becomes of the monster itself. We see it shrugging off gunfire, rockets, missiles, tank rounds, and even carpet bombing. How are we supposed to know if the grand finale finished it off? I’m okay with open endings in general, but you’ve got to give me some indication that there was a resolution. It was for this reason alone that most of the folks in our theater walked out grumbling. One person yelled “That’s it?” when the credits rolled, and someone an aisle or two ahead of me leaned over to a friend and said “What a ripoff.” Several of us stayed through the credits, hoping there would be some teaser or alternate ending or something a the end, but no joy.

Again, yes, I understand the monster is not the point of the movie, and we do get resolution with the main chracters. Unfortunately I expected a lot more from the flick, so it just isn’t for me. I suspect it’s going to be a case of love or hate for most viewers.

If you can live with all that, by all means, get thee to the theater. Despite some hokey moments, I was fine with the plot and characters. If you want a monster movie and hate all the loose ends, save your money.

Some examples:

• A recycler I visit is right across the street from a cemetery. It probably wasn’t a good idea to tell the Midget to “be on the lookout for zombies while I unload.” (To be fair, I did tell him a shuto strike to the head will put a zombie down.)
• Letting the Midget watch — at the age of two — the alien queen chase Newt through the floor at the end of Aliens was, in retrospect, not a good idea.
• When the Midget was terrified of the vacuum, going behind the couch and pretending to get sucked in was not the smartest decision I have ever made. If you try this one, here’s your fair warning: you will indeed think it is the funniest thing in the world. Your wife, on the other hand, most certainly will not.
• Convincing the Squirt I was hungry and was going to eat his little sister was probably just plain mean.
• Jumping out of hiding and scaring the children is fun. Jumping out of hiding and scaring the children when they are just out of bed, still half-asleep, and crying because they just had a nightmare, is the opposite of fun. By the time your realize this, it will already be too late.
• You really can scare the piss out of a child. I don’t advise you to try.
• A giant, man-eating chicken lurking in the bedroom may be ludicrous to you, but I assure you it is serious business to your child. It is also unwise to convince the child that said chicken is eating you and send him screaming for his mother. You will feel bad afterward, and you will feel even worse when your wife gets her hands on you.
• Your child has no reason to believe Cthulhu (or any other mythical beast or monster, for that matter) is not real. Save yourself some time and diffuse that shit right now.
• The flightless eagles at the zoo are not going to leap off their perches and carry the child away. Nor are the snakes and spiders going to break out of their cages and bite people.
• Jesus is not a zombie.
• Dracula does not eat children who don’t eat their supper.
• The Krampus is not real. Don’t bother showing them this painting, either.

Wow. It really is a bitch growing up the child of a horror writer.