On DVD: Cloverfield

Directed By Matt Reeves

Starring Michael Stahl-David, Jessica Lucas, Mike Vogel

The Movie

This is a film that has really divided critics. I didn't have an opportunity to see the film early so I didn't of course do an advanced review. Watching all the other reviews hit the web made me want to go ahead and speak my mind about this most unique of monster movies.

This film has been hyped for a long time with vague and purposefully mysterious websites, ads, and product placement. The mysterious campaign and the film's connection to LOST and Alias creator JJ Abrams brought about speculation that there was some big mystery around the film and its "codename". Well, let me say this without giving away too much; there is no mystery. In fact, this monster attacks New York film is about as basic and straightforward as it can be. That doesn't mean it's not good because it is the creators have just chosen to approach the classic formula in a an innovative way.

Typically a story like this, such as King Kong, is told in a very epic way with an almost global feeling. This style of filmmaking makes the attack feel extremely destructive and scary. With Cloverfield the creators have decided to approach a story like this from the ground level. Instead of showing a global perspective they show the attack from an individual, or at least small group perspective. There's obviously a 9/11 allegory here with scenes of destruction and people reacting similarly in the film to that tragic day. There's also a small comment on people's need to overly record everything that happens in their lives. There is opportunity for deeper social commentary in the film but it is mostly just anecdotal rather than deep commentary with the creators choosing instead to bury the film in the action of survival, which isn't a bad choice, just a choice.

The basic story follows a group of hipsters at a going away party for one of Rob who has taken a job in Japan. Rob's brother is given a video camera to record the night's events and get comments from all of Rob's friends. We learn through the first several minutes of the film that Rob had sex with a girl who had been a really close friend and now things are awkward between them. These are all really annoying people and just before things get to irritating all Hell breaks lose when a giant monster attacks the city. The group makes a break for it with Rob's brother constantly recording everything. The entire film is shot from the perspective of the recording.

Many critics, usually the cooler ones, have given bad marks to this film because they hate all of the characters in the film. I'm really on the fence in this regard, certainly not willing to take points away from the film due to the characters. I don't like any of them myself, and in real life I would probably hate these people. They're the types we'd see whooping it up with Paris Hilton and some overpriced night club. Here's the thing though, in this location in Manhattan you'd be more likely to run into these people than a cooler crowd, so these unlikable characters add an additional layer of reality to the proceedings. I will say that it's hard to care what happens to many o these people because there's no emotional connection to be made with any of them.

As it stands, there's a real art house sort of approach to this big monster movie and it really works to make the action suspenseful and exciting. This takes the idea of The Blair Witch Project to a new and more successful level. For me, this is easily one of the best monster movies to hit theaters since the 70's and it should be experienced in a theater for the first viewing.

9/10

The Video

This film is supposed to look like raw video, found footage, so it should look gritty and imperfect, and it does. The trick with evaluating the presentation is looking for compression artifacts or other anomalies common to DVD transfers. Everything here comes through fantastically, looking nearly identical to the theatrical presentation.

Now with that said I have to evaluate if the video does the job it's supposed to do. The video features solid blacks and excellent contrast, two things that wouldn't be common to found video footage, especially found video footage that has no special lighting. Check your own home video footage for an example. Also, there's quite a bit of filtering going on throughout the film, something else that wouldn't happen with real found footage.

I have to take points away from the score because this footage is supposed to appear as found but it's not, it's well lit, heavily post produced and it often features some gorgeous framing.

It looked really good in the theater and it looks just as good here on DVD but the producers unfortunately didn't have the guts to really do what they are trying to make us feel like they've done with this film.

8/10

Audio

The Dolby 5.1 presentation here is mostly stunning but there are some important hiccups that keep it from being perfect. The surround environment is impressive throughout this film with solid use of every speaker getting attention and the audio isn't just there it's given distance enhancing the feel of being in the center of a giant hollow city being ravaged by a monster and by military bombardment.

Sounds good right? The problem is that there are some instances where the dialogue gets so low it's hard to hear at a consistent volume so I found myself riding the volume during various scenes in order to hear some conversations.

7.5

The Packaging and Bonus Features

Cloverfield was a major hit. It made tons of money and built up a big fanbase and even found critical appeal so all of this points to a top of the line DVD release right? Apparently not. The single disc release is simply packaged in an amaray case with the poster art for the cover. The poster art was cool for the poster but now it just seems like a bit of a let down.

The bonus features aren't as plentiful as they should have been but they are of a top notch quality, no filler here.

The first thing I had to check out were the deleted scenes and alternate endings. The deleted scenes were pretty terrible and removed for good reason. The alternate endings were mostly just other riffs on the ending we eventually got. The ending the director close was the strongest of the bunch but it was cool to see the other options considered.

The making of featurette is fairly extensive and covers a bit of everything from the inception of the film through the production of it. It's a great watch and the best bonus feature on the disc. There are two short featurettes on the visual effects, one focused on the design of the creature and the other focused on the CGI and practical effects used to make L.A. look like New York City. There are way more CGI sequences and effects used in this film than I had originally realized so seeing them discussed and demoed here is pretty fascinating stuff.

The audio commentary from the director is interesting if you can get through his excruciating over use of the phrase "sort of" or actually the word "sorta" throughout. He offers some insight into the making of the film but overall it's just not that memorable of a commentary.

There's not much for such a successful and genre-centric film but what we get is good stuff.

8/10

Cloverfield is a fun and unique approach to the monster movie. I only wish the film would have went that extra mile and really done the handycam movie rather than shoot with top of the line cameras and then filter and clean the film up in post. The Last Broadcast, Series Seven, and The Blair Witch Project did a better job of utilizing the medium in which they exist but with that said Cloverfield is still a phenomenal ride. This DVD will be double dipped though. There should have been more extras and their will be in the future release.

Overall (Not an Average) 8/10

The Review

The Movie 9/10

The Video 8/10

The Audio 7.5/10

The Packaging and Bonus Features 8/10

Overall (Not an Average) 8/10

-Stephen Lackey