Holy shit. It sure has.
(Writer's note: the following is fairly spoiler free until a certain point towards the end of this post. I'll warn you all beforehand at the proper spot when to stop reading if you haven't seen the movie and do not wish to be spoiled. I don't wish to ruin the experiance for anyone. Ok? ok.)
By now, unless you're sharing a cave in the middle east with Osama Bin Ladin (and maybe even then), you've heard of Cloverfield.
Being the obesssive little shit I am when something grabs my attention and won't let go, I've been fairly knee deep in the viral advertising for this flick for the last few months.
I saw the trailer, like everyone else, when Chrissy (my wife and best friend for you new comers) and I took our kids to see TRANSFORMERS (it in itself was a decent flick that was actually better than I expected it to be, although I didn't love it. It was ok.).
Anyway, the trailer ran on the screen without a title and I was immediately struck by two things.
1- It seemed to be a much larger and ambitious "home video"/Blair Witch type flick. I fucking LOVE this type of film. The Blair Witch Project, The Last Broadcast, Interview with the Assassin, Cannibal Holocaust, Series 7... the idea of a 'fake' documentry or an 'event' caught on a video camera is a cool idea and not used as often as people seem to think.
2 - What we saw was nothing short of... well... FUCKING AWESOME LOOKING.
Wow. I'm using 'fuck' a lot so far. You'd think all of these years of writing and college and what not would lead me to use a less 'colorful' pronoun. Then again, sometimes there is no better word to use to get a point across that carries the neccessary weight.
Ah well. Fuck it (see?).
So... we see the trailer... I loved it, Chrissy liked it.. hell even Pat (my oldest who has recently turned 13... Jesus... I have a teenager... someone help me) thought it looked "cool".
Since there was no title on the trailer, I wound up looking up "Un-named J.J Abrams project" online and found a few things about it. Sites like "Project Cloverfield", "CloverfieldNews", "CloverfieldClues", Aint It Cool News, Dark Horizions and Newsarama all had something.
Then I discovered http://www.1-18-08.com/.
It seemed to be connected to the movie. All it had was two pictures on it. One of a close up of two women staring up at something that obviously is shocking them. The other of a party and someone drinking.
Over the next week or so, a third, then a fourth picture would find it's way onto the webite. Then, I discovered you could actually move and even "flip" the pictures. Two of them wound up having writing on the back.
Rumors of the movies titles came and went. Monsterous was one. Furious was another (both turned out to just be words on different verisons of the movie posters). Cloverfield, Overnight, Parasite, Chocolate Outrage (don't ask) and even Terrifying were all rumored to be the title. Of course, in the end it was Cloverfield (which by the way has NO hidden meaning... it's the name of the street leading up to Abrams offices and one that he just liked the sound of. The U.S. Government uses the term 'Cloverfield' as the name of the mission in the film from what I understand.)
A very cool movie poster eventually came to be outed. Take a look:
So, with all of this vague information, things slowed down a little. After that, my buddy Tom discovered (and told me about) http://www.slusho.jp/
Now viral marketing is not a new thing to a J.J. Abrams connected project. As a LOST fan, I have played with and seen many of the websites and items attached to LOST (The Hanso Corperation website, etc) , although I never got halfway as far as Tom did. The Slusho website was bizarre and it held some possible clues. Slusho is a frozen drink (pretty much like a Slurpee, Icee or Squishee) from Japan (which, from the trailer for the film, I knew was where "Rob" was going for his new job)
That website eventually led to http://tagruato.jp/, which is the company that owns and produces Slusho. They also own and operate a number of oil rigs in the oceans and had recently launched a satellite into space.
That led me to seeing that the site was 'hacked' by a 'greenpeace' type group called TIDOO (Tagruato Is Destroying Our Oceans) who wound up with their own website (http://www.tidowave.com/) and trying to expose things about Tagruato's secret ajenda including the fact that one of their oil rigs (The Chaui Station, which is the one closest ot New York by the way) is not really there for oil.
Eventually, another viral website was discovered called http://www.jamieandteddy.com/ which is a 'personal' site created by a girl named Jamie so she can send personal videos to her boyfriend Teddy who is away 'fighting for the cause' and 'saving the world'. Well, the 'Jamie' on here is one of the party goers depicted at the beginning of the trailer. Her boyfriend is onvolved with TIDO and is on a 'mission' to expose Tagruato. If you can figure out the password (I couldn't, but I got the password from one of the fan sites... it was http://www.cloverfieldnews.com/ actually) that was 'jllovesth' you could download and view a number of messages that Jamie recorded and left for Teddy. The tie in to the flick gets to be more obvious in the later videos. Jamie herself is in the movie, only briefly, but she is in it.
Curiouser and curiouser.
SO... what the heck does all of this mean?
Well, like The Blair Witch Project, the advertising and promotions for this movie were brilliant. People were frothing at the mouth for new information. As time went by, more bizarre clues and possible connections started to come out.
A 'news report' come out telling of the destruction of the Tagruato oil rig closest to the coast of New York. Tagruato released a press release blaming the situation on a terrorist attack by the group TIDO. TIDO denied it and claimed it was Tagruato that did it themselves in a cover-up. The footage from the news report is very well done and there are some 'camera phone' videos caught of the incedent that are pretty wild. To top it off, there were a number of 'newscasts' done in different langauges with different new agencies to make it more realistic.
Then the CEO of Tagruato traveled to New York. On January 17th, he was ambused by a group of TIDO protestors but managed to fight them off.
So, with all of this crazy stuff... maybe we should finally get to the movie itself?
Ok, like I promised up top, I'm going to warn people of spoilers. You can relax. I'm not quite there yet.
With all of the hype, all of the waiting and all of the crazy marketing involved, there was no way the film could live up to the high expectations I had placed on it. Right?
Right?
Wrong. The movie was, to continue to use my colorful adverb, FUCKING AWESOME.
I loved it. LOVED IT. I wasn't alone. Chrissy loved it. Every person I saw the film with loved it. It was a big hit to the crowd in the theatre.
It was as intense of a film as I have ever seen. Once the scene shown in the trailer (of the partygoers on the roof seeing the explosion at the edge of the city) happens the movie shifts into a roller-coaster ride and it never stops. Not once. At NO point do you sit back and say to yourself "ok, let's move here... please get going." You have no time to do this. There is really no slow parts, no calm down period. There is a slight point where you have a small break in the action and it lasts a few monites but it's an emotional scene and works well. You are never bored. You never have a chance to question anything cause the film just NEVER LOSES MOMENTUM. It goes faster and faster until a hell of a scene that even if you feel you know is coming is still a hell of a jolt.
Yeah there's a few 'shakey cam' moments and yeah you have to use quite the medicom of disbelief that Hud (the guy with the video camera) would actually carry the damn thing the entire time, even when doing somethings that would be awkward while holding the camera.
Who fricken cares? The film was great. So you have to take a few things with a grain of salt.
For all of those who get into the "It's not realistic that he'd carry the camera the whole time."... well... IT'S A MOVIE. Is it realistic that New York could be attacked by something unexplanable and devistaed so?
If you're going to get caught up on the negative of it being a 'home video' movie, then you will not like this film... but trust me, the format its shot in makes the movie SO MUCH MORE ENJOYABLE. If it was done as a traditional movie it would have lost a lot of it's luster and would just be another horror survival flick.
The big plus for this is that it's not from the point of view of "up above" like all movies are. There is no Army General, no scientist with answers, no President demanding facts... it's not Godzilla or King Kong or Independance Day. It's all from the point of view from the people in the streets who are directly in the path of what is happening. It's seeing the events from the ground... not from above like most movies are.
I, for one, think the entire thing is brilliant.
Ok, that was my spoiler free section of my review. Now, let's discuss a bit of the film itself. Ok, all of you have who not seen the flick but have gotten this far... GET OUT.
Go.
Shoo.
Vamoose.
Disperse.
Still there? You were warned. Don't come crying to me.
Ok, first off not only was the monster fucking cool looking, but the little 'spider' like ones in the subway just were nasty and horrifying little things.
There were six scenes that just blew my mind.
1 - The main hook from the trailer of the head of the Statue of Liberty hitting the street and rolling thrugh it before coming to a rest. Amazing.
2 - The bridge. When Jason is standing on the edge and that tenticle (or whatever it was) hits the bridge... jeez.
3 - The subway tunnel. As soon as Rob says to Hud "Doesn't that thing have night vision?" Every fricking person in the theatre had to know what was coming, and I think we all did. And we all jumped anyway. One of the most frenzied scenes I have ever seen in a movie.
4 - The scene in the makeshift hospital when they realize that Melania was bitten. "We have a bite!' someone screams. The shot of her silolutte expanding and then exploding in a mist of blood while there are screams and shouts was unreal.
5 - The helicopter crash. Terrifying, realistic and painful. Listening to Hud scream "Please God, please God, please God!" was heartwrenching. Seeing his point of view as the ground got closer and closer made my heart stop. It honestly made me feel like we were in the helicopter with them.
6 - The shot of the monster right above Hud, then it eating him. Ouch.
In the end, it was Chrissy who noticed that on the background of the last scene (when the tape kicked back to the older recording of Rob and Beth on the ferris wheel at Coney Island) that something falls from the sky into the ocean.
We all stayed through the credits. I was convinced that something would happen at the total end of the credits. I was right. A dark screen. Static. What sounds like breathing. Then someone whispers what sounds like "Help us."
Apparently that's not all it says. According to a few different websites, when the audio is played backwards it says "It's still alive."
Unbelievable. This movie was fantastic. I cannot express how much I enjoyed it. All of it... every last part. Just a great job.
The two words I keep thinking best to descibe this movie are intense and frenzied. No words better fit.
