Cloverfield 1-18-08

When telling a story, there is a fine line between “leaving things up to interpretation” or “just not explaining it.” In one of the special features on the Lost Season 1 DVD, producer JJ Abrams told Damon Lindelof to “just make them find a hatch.” When Damon asked what the hatch would be, JJ aparently said, “don’t worry about it, we’ll figure it out later.” Which is fine. People accuse Lost of making things up as they go along and therefore not being a well written show, but I feel the opposite. Making things up is what makes a story. What matters is if the things you make up make sense in the end. So the fact that there are strange ghosts named Jacob and smoke monsters running around the island is fine with me… as long as they are explained in the end.

So, when “Cloverfield” comes along, I have the same expectations. I have a lot of confidence in JJ Abrams’ ability to leave things up to interpretation (like the Matrix) rather than just not explaining things (like The Lady in the Water). So which one was it?

Spoilers ahead, so watch ya step, kid.

I kind of think that people like myself might be giving the film too much attention and thought. I think it’s probably meant to be looked at just as what it is: a monster movie. And as a monster movie, I think it succeeds. The one flaw is that it is never actually says what exactly the monster is and where it came from. But the hand-held camera style worked and really pulled you in. The first ten or fifteen minutes are just them goofing around at a goodbye party for one of them, and at some parts you really feel like maybe you’re watching a YouTube video or even a video of friends. Friends who stage all their dialog, but… actually, the acting wasn’t all that bad in these parts. They looked as spontaneous as possible with a script, I guess. The hand-held camera giving it the realism makes the corny dialog really stick out.

But once the action starts, you tend to ignore the minor acting/dialog imperfections because a giant monster is destroying New York. I think about a half-an-hour in is where it really picks up… the first shots of the military striking back and launching missiles and firing machine guns and running over shit with tanks is really the point where the “do whatever it takes to stop the end of the world” feeling kind of kicks in.

(This paragraph sums up the movie so here’s your final spoiler warning.) So, we follow our main group of characters through the city as the Alpha-male goes to find his lost love. In the end, the military pulls out all stops and bombs the whole city in hopes of stopping the beast. Of course, they all die (or, you’d think they’d die), but their camcorder is apparently retrieved and ends up the property of the Department of Defense, who slapped an intro and outro slide on both ends of the film.

So, that’s the monster movie. I give it a C+, which is average. I liked the destruction and the fact that the monster was actually SEEN and was actually pretty scary. I didn’t like that we didn’t really get much in terms of an explanation. But was it an “up to you” ending, or a “fuck it, we didn’t really think that far ahead when writing it,” ending? I still don’t know.

But JJ Abrams has a track record of hiding the details. And if the “devil is in the details,” or whatever the saying is, then maybe we should look at the details.

The DoD slides provide a hint as to what exactly the word Cloverfield is: it’s apparently what “the area formerly known as Central Park” is… in other words, where they found the camera. This doesn’t explain where the name comes from, though, and I also seem to remember thinking it’s the name of the case itself, as in “the Cloverfield case.” So, somebody unseen, somewhere in the movie’s world, knows what happened and why, and knew enough to give it a pretty distinct name. But they don’t tell us.

I have two theories, and since it’s my blog, you’re gonna hear all about them.

Theory #1: the monster was an alien. No further explanation is needed, since all aliens are pissed off about the fact that they are giant monsters.

Theory #2: the monster is a mutated creature from the ocean. Let me elaborate, because I like this idea better!

Before the film even opened, there was an internet viral marketing game, kind of like how they do with Lost now and then. You find various clues at strange websites and put the pieces together. Sometimes the pieces don’t even appear to matter in the final product, but sometimes they explain some pretty significant things that the final product wouldn’t get into (such as the 4,8,15,16,23,42 mystery on Lost). I did not play the Cloverfield game, but from what I hear, the bottom line was a hint called Slusho, which is a Japanese beverage company.

This is important, you see, because the main character is having a going away party because he’s moving to be the vice president of a Japanese company.

So, if you go to Slusho’s website and look at the history (which you should do, it’s kind of creepy, like the Boobahs), you’ll notice that the founder of Slusho died trying to get the perfect ingredient. Her son later became an ocean scientist and ended up finding the perfect ingredient after it’s location came to him in a dream… the bottom of the ocean. In his dream, drinking this ingredient turned him from a small fish into a giant whale.

In the film, they make a couple of references to the creature being a sea creature. One of the kids says something about unknown life popping up now and then from the ocean, like fish species long thought extinct, so maybe the monster was just some kind of creature that burrowed up from the deep crevices of the ocean.

I, however, like the idea of consumerism causing all the problems. So I’m thinking the Slusho company did something strange in the pursuit of profits and started accidentally mutating whales. So I googled “cloverfield whale” and came up with some stuff.

Stay with me.

It’s roar kind of sounded like a whale… I guess. It also looked very whale like (it’s friggin huge), with it’s tale and very obvious gills that you see at the end, along with it’s giant mouth. And as it turns out, whales apparently have parasites attached to them. Could those be the spidery things that kept falling off of it and attacking people? Here is a picture (click to enlarge). It doesn’t look exactly like this in the movie, but similar. Mostly the tail.

And why does Slusho have to be Japanese? If it’s American consumerism that’s ruining the world, why didn’t they use the monster to symbolize American consumerism? My guess it’s an homage to Godzilla. In other words, it’s Japan’s fault. Since Slusho is a Japanese company, I blame them, too.

Or, Theory #3: Desmond turning the failsafe key and blowing up the hatch released whatever it was being contained every 108 minutes… and it was this thing.

Actually, theory one holds some credibility, too, after I found a website that claims the last scene of the movie, the “flashback” when the tape jumps and a portion of what happened earlier, before the incident, is shown… the main character and his girlfriend were looking out across the ocean, and apparently you can see a giant black ball fall into the ocean from the sky. Maybe it was an alien after all, who flew in all Transformers-like. I didn’t see this, but did notice they hung on the shot of the ocean a bit longer than needed, so maybe I missed it. If this is true, it might mean the main character himself captured both the beginning and the end of the monster.

The end?? BUT IS IT?? We stayed after the credits, wishing the fictional Department of Defense would give some kind of explanation like “what you just saw was the result of…” but no. Instead, you hear a faint voice, as if the camera is still running. You can’t make out what it says, but if you Google it (Google really is your best friend in all of this, if you haven’t figured out), you’ll learn that if you play it backwards it’s the main character saying something. Highlight the following blank space if you want to spoil it for yourself, or if you don’t plan on taking in a reversible audio recorder with you to the theater: “It’s still alive.” So, sequel? Methinks. Maybe an aftermath story explaining all of this.

What are your thoughts? Katy thought it was a dinosaur, which would be awesome. I like the idea of a terrorist group forgetting all about nukes and unleashing the ultimate biological weapon: they clone a dinosaur and let it loose in Manhattan.

So, the fact that I saw it exactly four hours ago and am still talking about it (I wrote this blog Friday night… it is 3am Saturday morning as I write this) speaks to the effectiveness of JJ Abrams and his marketing department. So I guess the “up to interpretation” ending worked. In that case, I give the movie a solid A.

*****

There is another great moment in the film, that actually comes before the film even starts…

The fact that Leonard Nimoy (Spock) does the voice-over gives this film the credibility from it’s past that I was waiting for. Now I can be excited. Go nerds!