Movies Jan. 24, 2008 -- Just keep taping!!!

"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Some might question the quotation of Shakespeare's Macbeth when referring to the recent Bad Robot horror flick Cloverfield, but rest assured there is method to the madness.

For starters, Cloverfield is "a tale told by an idiot." The film is supposedly footage from the day New York was attacked by a monster. The main character, Rob, is moving away and his friend Hud is taping some fond farewells at the party. Once the attack starts, Hud turns from interviewer to documentarian. He films the entire attack and that's the movie; 85 minutes of shaky camcorder footage shot by some dude from a party.

Awesome.

Secondly, Cloverfield is definitely "full of sound and fury." Technically, the film astonishes. Scenery is blowing up left and right, people are rioting, dialogue firing, and the camera never cuts! To maintain the reality of the film, it can't! The result is an intense experience of going roughly every 7 to 10 minutes without a single cut. That said, it can't all be special effects and the rest of the film boasts some truly monstrous problems.

The most central issue is that our survivors carry around the best camera ever! The battery lasts forever - though it shouldn't - and the camera itself manages to survive literally everything thrown at it, not to mention multiple falls from the sky (Gimme!)! For the camera to remain completely in tact while our heroes suffer bumps and bruises is past unreal - it's preposterous.

And that's not the only bit of craziness Cloverfield offers audiences. One character goes from critically injured to running as hard as anyone - actually lifting another person at one point. Irrationality persists as Rob's friends keep following him for little to no reason (my mistake: no friends, no camera, no movie). Finally, the silliness may reach its pinnacle when the very soldier who captures our group, detains them for about 45 seconds before releasing them. Even as he describes why, it seems utterly ridiculous.

By the credits we've somehow managed to watch a realistic monster movie with very little reality in it and a whole lot of plot holes. So what on Earth is the point of all of this? The answer - there is none; which is why Cloverfield ultimately "[signifies] nothing."

Cloverfield actively sought to be a reality-based monster movie - but what is that other than a complete oxymoron? While some scenes may have entertained, the absence of reality in many moments combined with the complete lack of answers for much of what occurs in the film left viewers confused, annoyed, and ultimately unfulfilled. Perhaps the saddest part is that under normal circumstances, no one would expect anything of such a film. No one questioned King Kong climbing the Empire State; they just gazed with amazement. The truth is, Cloverfield stomped on its own monstrous foot: the ad campaign, the camcorder visual device - it wanted to be believed, to be real. If only the story elements had caught up with the effects, we might have actually had something here.

85 min. Directed by: Matt Reeves. Bad Robot

Rated: PG-13

If You Liked This, You'd Probably Like: The Host (2006)!

- Clyde Monsters