Cloverfield - A saucerful of predictions
CLOVERFIELD will probably do well enough to support its modest budget. The viral marketing campaign that is driving the movie will cost a quarter to a half of conventional advertising for an analogous movie. Granted, they're still buying newspaper ads (and I'm assuming targeted TV ads, but if they didn't, it wouldn't surprise me a bit -- those things are expensive.) Between the LOST audience and DVD sales subsequent to the short run in the theatre, it should end up in the black. Thirty million isn't a lot these days.
CLOVERFIELD, to all appearances, is a monster movie turned inside-out. It's the equivalent of reality-basing every Toho monster flick ever made (though my gut tells me the plot is more along the lines of GORGO: mother monster off to save baby monster stolen by evil moneygrubbing humans). And, in the parlance of comic criticism today, it's going to try to suck all the "fun" out of the genre. I don't know about you, but when I put in a monster movie, I want to see a monster trashing stuff, no matter how many thousands of onscreen deaths are implied. Oh, right, just like in the A-TEAM, all the bullets hit tires and all the monsters are ripping down abandoned buildings. See, monster movies aren't really horror movies, with but a few exceptions. They're monster movies. They have their own rules, and really the A-number One rule is that the monster is the hero.
Oh, and I want to see the goddamn monster being the goddamn hero of the piece. I *don't* *care* about the humans. The only time I ever did was when I saw the original GODZILLA, which is more about a force of nature being unleashed by Big Science on unsuspecting Tokyo. That's some scary stuff right there. But when it comes to nearly any other movie in the entire genre, the humans are the last thing on my mind. CLOVERFIELD is all about inverting that and making the humans the center of things. And not the scientists or generals out to stop it or their willful kids who are out to befriend this fifty-ton monstrosity, but rather, ordinary people. It's the TIME Person of the Year 2006 writ large. Me me me me me. A perfect monster movie for the blogging generation (of which I am a graying member).
CLOVERFIELD may succeed, storywise, but it's going to have to hook me with the characters right off the bat. And I don't mean some poor schlub who can't get the guts to ask the girl of his dreams out on the last night before he ships out on a big business meeting to Malaysia. The monster is going to have to make the story unfold. Not the plot. The story.
Shaky-cam is going to get old in the first few minutes. Yes, I had the same criticism of BLAIR WITCH back in the day. There's a line between "reality" and verisimilitude that is wobbly and nearly invisible. One step too far and people are going to lose patience real fast.
Oh, and no mistaking, the conceit is a great one. It hasn't really been done before, not in this manner. I have to give the writers and crew their props on that. Just like BLAIR WITCH was an awesome conceit (even if CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST did it first). But a conceit is not always enough, is it? It's what's done with the germ of that idea that really counts. Ideas are fine and all, but execution is what's going to get people to stick around.
The mystery will only go so far. "What's in the box" is a great way to start things off (or wrap them up), but it's a very very trick tightrope to walk. You can only tease for so long before people's wonder becomes irritation, and like Yoda says "Irritation leads to ridicule; ridicule leads to the Dark Side." Mysteries wrapped in paradoxes dipped in conundrums are tasty confections, but I want a meal, y'know? This is why all the classic monster flicks went out of their way to keep the Thing under wraps until the proper moment for the reveal, and then you got plenty of chances to see some human-crunching action. I suspect that the reveal won't happen until it's far too late to pull things off.
Powerlessness isn't cool, either. If there's a conflict, the appearance of lopsidedness is one thing, only to have a reversal come out and save things, that's fine. So long as the reversal isn't totally out of nowhere and doesn't just instantly negate the previous 90 minutes. When you bring it to the scale of a handful of rabble against the Gigantic Monster of Doom, that's kind of one-sided, yes? Now if you're talking about the Military Might of a Nation versus the Gigantic Monster of Doom, that's a playfield that's a lot more compelling. Hence my problems with "Oh by the way, we're all fucked" endings, in all but the most rewarding of presentations (ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and MOUTH OF MADNESS come to mind here, go go John Carpenter!)
My fear (and yes, it's fear--I don't revel in this; I *want* my movies to thrill or move me) is that there will be no there there. The mystery box will get opened (as it will *have* to be) and there'll be emptiness inside. It may be an arresting portrait of Things Gone Wrong, but it will be a portrait and nothing more.
I am more than happy to be wrong in any or all of this.