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What a monster

Deborah Ross

Wednesday, 30th January 2008

Cloverfield
15, Nationwide

From this point on, Cloverfield is all screams and narrow escapes and falling skyscrapers — reminiscent of September 11 — amid brief glimpses of the monster, a reptilian beast the size of Brent Cross who releases huge clicking spidery things that bite until blood spurts. It’s a standard monster caper, with someone even shouting, at one point, ‘It’s alive!’ There is nothing original about Cloverfield. Even the hand-held, unsteady home-camera technique has been done before, and better (see The Blair Witch Project), and it doesn’t add a sense of either panic or urgency. It just annoys. Hud, the big chump, is always missing the shot of the monster. Still, the plot implausibilities and impossibilities are, at least, sublime. When Rob has to tell his mother that Jason is dead he does so deep in a subway tunnel, from his mobile. Here, you will not be thinking about how sad it all is because, instead, you will be wondering, ‘What is that phone that works deep in subway tunnels, and where can I get one?’ You may also marvel at the TV news shows, which keep on rolling as the city burns.

The director, Matt Reeves, describes the monster in the press notes as ‘a metaphor for our times and the terror we all face’. Is this, then, how America sees its aggressors, as unprovoked monsters suddenly appearing from nowhere for no apparent reason? Now, that is very frightening.

You have no reason for going to see this film whatsoever, and if I should hear that you have, I shall be very cross. Very, very cross indeed, and when I am very, very cross, there is no knowing what I might do. I might, even, make you go see it again.