Cloverfield arrives in theaters on January 18th and we'll find out if all the viral marketing hype was true or just...hype. Harry Knowles has seen it and just about passed out from the excitement of it all. He
loved it and now worships at the altar of J.J. Abrams.
The movie is f***ing brilliant. It's what we were told it was going to be. An intimate perspective on an impossibly grand scale human disaster beyond most human levels of comprehension.
What is the monster? How do you describe something that doesn't look like anything you've ever seen before? It's not a f***ing upright walking whale. It doesn't look like any iteration of GODZILLA that we've ever seen. It is enormous. And even though I've seen it... I am hard-pressed to come up with a comparative creation. You know that big f***ing thing in THE MIST? It isn't that. Is the creature a biped? I'm not sure, I think it might've been a four-legged beastie... it has a tail, it has teeth and freaky eyes like that horse that died in ANIMAL HOUSE. It's kinda of a grayish-yellowish-off-white looking thing. But more important than the creature is what this f***er does. He basically goes bug-nuts.
The creature isn't the groundbreaking thing about the film. It is, but it isn't.
You see, what has me so excited about this film is that this is the giant monster movie that isn't at all like any giant monster movie we've seen before... but is exactly that movie.
I guarantee you that as this movie takes place... all the shit that you've seen in Giant monster movies is happening. Somewhere a general is screaming about nuking New York.... Somewhere is a politician screaming that you can't nuke New York. Another General wants to know why our weapons are not affecting this thing. A PRESIDENT wants to know where it came from -- and several thousand journalist are trying to figure all that out too.
But this film isn't about the scientist, the generals, the Presidents, the mayors or any of the big people. This time, the film is from the perspective of those people that live in those buildings that the monster is breaking through. This is about the people running in the street that scream, "GODZILLA!!!" and run. This is about trying to survive that insanity. Not just that, but to try and save one life.
Like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but instead of Nazis it's a giant monster.
Yikes. We generally hate the whole "found footage" thing and the Blair Witch-style handheld camera thing too. But for J.J., we'll suck it up and see Cloverfield for ourselves.