When It Comes Into a Room, People Hit It With a Broom Monday, January 21, 2008

A few other thoughts on Cloverfield. I'm unusually disappointed with this one--I bought into the marketing and I dug the concept. I'm sympathetic to folks who try to approach tired genre stories in a new way, and this one seemed particularly novel. The trouble is, you've got to have really sympathetic, believable characters and you've got to give them something really interesting--and plausible--to do. The yuppies didn't turn me off as much as I thought they would, but the story and dialogue are straight out of the Tojo playbook (and the ending is close enough to that of a much better movie to be really irritating). In short, every Big Character Scene made me want to die, and I found myself coming back around whenever I saw army guys blasting away for dear life.* Dispose of genre conventions at your own risk.

Meanwhile, the teenagers in back of me--who amazingly kept quiet for the endless twenty-minute prologue but giggled during every moment of cyclopean horror--seemed to be immune to the shaki-cam. Is Greg Cochran right? In just one generation, have we evolved an immunity to shitty cinema verite? By 2100, expect the beetle-men.

*The monster itself, meanwhile, is shitty CGI. Reign of Fire looked better.

@ 7:16:00 PM,

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