When I was very young, I had an affinity for ants. When misguided school friends would kick at anthills, I always reprimanded them, asking what they would feel like if a giant appeared and smashed their home to bits. J.J. Abrams (the wunderkind creator of TV’s Lost) must have been spying on my friends and me from behind a bush because he’s produced a film that directly answers my naive query. In Cloverfield, Manhattan is the anthill and human “ants” scurry for their lives in the shadow of a colossal and very angry creature the size of the Empire State Building.

The plot — and I use the word loosely — centers around a small group of disposable twenty-somethings trying to survive the most extraordinary night of their lives. Cloverfield begins with a message from the U.S. government, stating that the subsequent material is civilian video recovered from the site formerly known as Central Park. The remainder of the film is presented as handheld camcorder footage, which opens at a going away party for Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who’s relocating to Japan (no subtext there!) to be the (exceptionally young) vice president of some unnamed company. Rob’s best friend Hud (T.J. Miller) is assigned camcorder duty and spends the party obnoxiously interrogating Rob’s friends (fresh faced newcomers Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, Mike Vogel and Odette Yustman).

But their festivities are cut short when a gargantuan monster appears out of nowhere and begins laying waste to the city, toppling skyscrapers and leaving a vast path of destruction in its formidable wake. Our protagonists, who must make their way from downtown to an evacuation site in Central Park, constantly seem to find themselves underfoot or caught in the crossfire as the military tries in vain to stop the monster’s advance. What the creature is or what it wants is never explained. We know no more or less than what the camera happens to capture. As such, the film has no beginning or end and eschews any sort of neat and tidy resolution.

Cloverfield (an oddly pastoral name for a monster movie) is the sort of film you would get if Godzilla mated with The Blair Witch Project — a shaky, handheld visual document in which the fears of modern America are personified in a horrific, unfathomable beast (in this case, a cross between the nasties found in Starship Troopers and The Mist). Much as the Cold War inspired a spate of rampaging monster movies (think The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms), Cloverfield trades on our post 9/11 anxieties, once again turning downtown Manhattan into a world of raging fires, twisted superstructure and ash-covered bodies.

For the film to work, we have to suspend our disbelief and accept the premise that someone would continue filming even during the most cataclysmic of circumstances — not just distant horrors but in the midst of certain, immediate death. At some point even the most indulgent viewer must ask, would you really keep filming at a time like that? It is a conceit we have to accept if we want to keep watching, but it always keeps us from fully engaging with the story. Other issues like battery life and tape length are ignored all together.

Cloverfield is an admirable experiment in form even as it is a miserable failure in function. It is a bold and daring film, but not a good one. Nothing more than a gimmick from beginning to end, Cloverfield is a savvy marketing campaign masquerading as a movie. There is no more substance to the film than what the brilliant trailers reveal. That no one has any idea what the film is about has not stopped virally connected fanboys and armchair moviegoers alike from salivating over what the film will finally reveal. The answer, unfortunately, is not much. What you see in the trailers is what you get.

While most films of this variety track the monster from god-like angles, viewing, with omnipotent wonder, the beautiful carnage of its violence, Cloverfield slaves itself almost exclusively to the perspective of the ant who is far too concerned with staying alive to feel awe in the face of annihilation. And while this viewpoint is somewhat unique (it was done better in Spielberg’s equally disappointing War of the Worlds) it is still standard monster fare. The short film (clocking in at only 73 minutes minus the credits!) is essentially a protracted teaser for a longer, more fleshed out film we will never see.

Dull and moronic faux-improvised dialogue mixed with inappropriate and misplaced levity cancel out much of the film’s intensity and generally terrific visual effects. While Cloverfield is cleverly and imaginably made, it brings nothing new to the table. It is nothing more than an old-fashioned monster movie dressed up in modern threads.

© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.