Monster Movie?

In an attempt to stay "with it" and simultaneously get out for a while, I took the bus downtown today to see Cloverfield. The first preview (scroll down), which everyone who saw Transformers this summer was talking about, showed snippets of the first few minutes of the movie: a party, the beginnings of some kind of attack, and the head of the Statue of Liberty rolling down the street, then cut out with a release date and no title or stars. Even the movie's website gives us nothing more than a trailer and a vague summary of the concept. The ploy evidently worked, because the movie brought in an estimated $41 million this weekend (of which $4 was mine. If you like going into movies blind, read no further, for while I won't say what happens, what follows is nonetheless information I didn't want.)

Cloverfield is definitely not the average monster movie. The whole movie is "filmed" on a young man's camcorder as he and his friends try to survive the whole mess. We know exactly what they know about the situation and the monster, which is close to nothing. Some find this frustrating. I can't tell you exactly what the monster was, where it came from, what it did, how it did it, or why it did it. I think that was kind of the point, actually, because instead of cringing at relentless bloody horror, I focused on the characters and their relationships with each other.

This movie isn't going to win any Oscars and I don't see myself re-watching it time and time again, but I was gratified to see a movie that put us humans in a positive light. All the characters were risking their lives, when they each had multiple chances to escape, to help each other and do the right thing. There was not a scum bag among them, no backstabbing-to-save-myself, and lot of selfless sticking together. In between the running and screaming, there were a lot of little portraits of the people in the movie and their relationships with each other. Ultimately, this was less a monster movie and more a movie about humanity set against a monster attack.

Which is not to suggest that monster isn't going to keep me up a little tonight.

Anyway, go see it. It's exciting and kinda-sorta heart warming at the same time, in a horrific death way. One word of advice: sit further back in the theater, as the Blair-Witch style camera work got to even my iron stomach after a while.

UPDATE: A few pros seem to agree with me.