Mufasa's Epic Long Cloverfield Review

Cloverfield:

The movie starts with Bars and Tone. I guess they forgot to take that part out of the film. Bars and tone are important to make sure the color on a video is setup properly when transferring a copy of a film to different destinations, but they’re usually taken out by the point they are shown in theatres.

Oh. It was on purpose. Well whatever.

So Cloverfield is about some military guys watching a video recovered from a disaster zone. Well, or so I think we’re supposed to think that. I like to assume that the last man in the US is huddled in some military base because it’s the only safe haven left in the country, watching the videos kept in the bunker to try and keep himself from inevitably going insane from loneliness, while the Cloverfield monster and the tiny little things coming off his back ravage the country and the remaining few people there.

But anyway, lets assume it’s the military, and assume that they’re watching to perhaps discover more about the creature. So the first thing we see is an apartment at 6:42 in the morning on April 27th. Not very important to note the date, but considering all the viral shit J.J. Abrahms did to advertise the movie, it could be important. Apparently some passed out slut at the party was important, but I’ll get to that later, so this might as well.

Anyway: why the guy is up so early, after fucking a chick is beyond me. Usually when I fuck a chick ((which is never, but I would imagine this would be the case)) I would assume that it would mellow me out to the point where I would sleep in pretty late. Who knows? Maybe he fucked the chick at 8Pm and fell asleep a 8:02 right after he finished. But then the girl looks rather satisfied, so maybe he lasted a little longer than I give him credit for.

Getting on to more important things, we see random skips on the tape, so either the guy decided to arbitrarily stop the tape just in time to prevent the military ((or Bob, the last american alive)) from seeing the girls tits, or he doesn’t know how to work his own video recorder, or maybe more practically the tape is damaged. But this camera is probably the most sturdiest camera in the entire fucking world, so of all of the reasons, the last one is least likely.

Also, he had sex with the girl in her father’s place. Which is pretty fucking lame. I’d hope that in the future, when my daughter gets a boyfriend, he at least has the decency to have sex with her in someplace other than my own fucking bed. But this is a minor thing.

We then finally cut to some guy who at least admits he doesn’t know how to work the camera, nearly about to get hit by a car, while his complaining fiancé’ yells at him for trying to do what he was told. Women, huh? They argue some more, almost to the point where she, (Lily) wishes he was dead. Though she doesn’t say that. But it’s funnier if you think of it that way. Also, it’s now May 22. And they’re throwing a party for the current operator of the camera’s, (Jason’s) brother who was the first guy operating the camera in the film. Which means the sturdiest camera in the entire fucking world is also one of the most slutty cameras in the entire fucking world, as it is used by every male main character in the film. *Larf Face*

This is the point where we come across the real main character IMO; Hud. Now, for the first few minutes of the film, Hud seems like a retard, ruining any chance his best friend Rob, has of getting the girl of his dreams, ruining any chance of himself getting Marlena, the girl of his own dreams, and pretty much just acting like that one friend we all know as the moron with the heart of gold, but is mostly a moron. As the film goes on you do start to like him more though. I promise.

So from this point on we take the perspective of Hud. So if you ignore the military thing at the beginning, (Or Bob, the last american alive’s thing), then the movie takes place from Hud’s perspective. For the most part anyway. At the beginning it isn’t him, and after he dies it isn’t him anymore either. But he’s the one which the sturdiest sluttiest camera in the entire fucking world sticks with for the longest time in the movie, so that’s the way it is.

Oh yeah, Rob’s going to Japan by the way. Which is where the love story originates from. Which is the integral part of the movie I guess. Why, the love story is the glue that keeps the movie together in a MONSTER movie, is beyond me. Typically people go into a monster movie to see the monster and it’s ravaging of everything, not a sappy love story between two people, but WHATEVRE.

So more party stuff.

Rob finally arrives and acts like a tosser.

There’s the drunken slut, passed out on the couch, apparently an important plot-point. No really. I’m dead serious. This passed out bitch on the couch is seriously an important plot point. Mind you, you never SEE it in the movie, nor see her ever again. But this passed out bitch is integral to the story. I’ll explain more later.

Rob acts like a dick toward the girl he had fucked in her dad’s apartment (Beth, presumably ‘Elizabeth’ but that doesn’t sound as slutty.) While both are in love with eachother but he never called her, he’s leaving to go to Japan-

UGHH!! WHY AM I WATCHING THIS?! I CAME HERE TO SEE A MONSTER MOVIE! I WANT BITCHES GETTING EATEN! SHIT GETTING DESTROYED!! IF I WANT TO HAVE DRAMA BETWEEN MY FRIENDS, I’LL GO OUT AND HAVE SEX WITH MY BEST FRIEND’S SISTER WHO HE DOESN’T HAVE! CAN WE PLEASE GET TO SOME REAL INTERESTING SHIT!!!!

Almost as if to comply with my irritation, the camera shakes, and this time it’s accompanied by the characters screaming and going: “Oh shit!” so it’s not the crappy choice of filming technique, it’s something interesting happening.

Apparently everyone is saying that it was an earthquake, that caused an oil rig to capsize somehow, but no other notable damage reported.

...Okay. Carry on.

Then the oil rig explodes, and it’s apparently close enough to their apartment, where the pieces nearly hit.

....Okay.....

They rush down the stairs, cause clearly if they get back to the apartment in time, the chunks of the oil rig would just damage the roof and not the entire building, and they’d be safe. Deciding that it was a stupid idea, they just flee to the streets of the city. Why the oil rig piece perfectly hit their building, I don’t know, but I guess if the movie was about some guy who was far away from the catastrophe, escaped the city unharmed and perfectly alright despite having lost his house and all his belongings to a giant lizard thing, that I don’t think insurance probably covers, it wouldn’t be as exciting of a movie. Kinda like if there was a zombie apocalypse in Europe, and the movie took place in America, and all that happens is that they decide with Russia, to nuke that continent and hope everything turns out okay.

But ANYWAY, getting back to the streets of manhattan: WOAH! WHAT THE FUCK! IT’S A GIANT LADY’S HEAD!!! WTF?!?! Oh. It’s Lady Liberty’s head. That’s not symbolic or anything. [/J.J. Abrahms isn’t a psycho hollywood filmmaker who hates America and Freedom]
First off: How do you manage to destroy Lady Liberty’s head like that. The thing does have a long tail, but the head had claw marks. The thing would have had to got out of the water, at which point news would have traveled pretty fast about it being a gigantic monster thing attacking New York. Also, it then shows up nearby the main characters a few blocks down. How the hell did it get there so fast!? I mean, I know it’s big, but the amount of destruction it would have caused by running would have created such noise and dust, that you could tell that some extremely serious shit is going down, while all the characters still seem just bewildered, rather than shit their pants scared and abandon all attachment in order to save your own sorry self.

Moving on: Shit goes down, a building collapses, and our cast run into a grocery store to save themselves.

Ahem.

“ a building collapses”

“run into a grocery store”

Just sayin. I guess it would be kinda hard to think when you’re panicking that much. And I guess no matter where you go in New York, you’ll be threatened by collapsing buildings. Also, the glass breaks via “The Mist” style, cept without giant insects, (Yet) Hud drops the sluttiest most durable camera in the world, as it video tapes everyone coughing. And Hud must really like this camera, cause he takes it with him, even while anyone would be too fucking piss scared to even remember that there IS a camera, would forget it there. But then the remaining 60 minutes of the film would be rather boring if you were spending it staring at an empty grocery store for the remainder of the time. Till it collapses.

So some people are wandering around outside, one of them being Marlena, inexplicably, a bunch of buildings caught on fire, I mean, I suppose it could happen, but I really just think they threw that in to say: “LOOK! LOOK! THERE’S FIRE IN THAT BUILDING! THERE’S SOME REAL SHIT GOING DOWN HERE!!!” It’s like in Dawn of the Dead. How exactly does a Zombie apocalypse cause a car to light on fire and explode? Zombies don’t cause fire. Unless you’re playing Timesplitters.

Speaking of which, they DO show a car on fire. Now how does a giant monster about 8 blocks away cause that to happen? Maybe someone went: “Well, we’re all dead. May as well fulfill my dream of lighting my car on fire and watching it explode!”

I will say, it is nice for once to see the police, military, and rescue squad on the scene immediately. In most disaster movies, the governmental aid is always considered to be slow in response to a catastrophe or incompetent. Like in: “The Mist.”, “Dawn of the Dead.”, “Shaun of the dead.”, etc etc etc. In this, ambulences and police are RIGHT on the scene helping people, and the military is already trying to bomb the shit out of Cloverfield. (The giant monster. I assume it’s called that.)

The bridge scene:

Jason gets killed by the monster’s tail. Or tentacle. That’s pretty much it.

Moving on:

His Fiancé (Lily) and brother(Rob) are super bummed, but Rob quickly moves on, cause he receives a message from Beth. Remember Beth? FUCK! I THOUGHT WE WERE DONE WITH THIS STUPID ROMANCE DRAMA!!! He steals a battery and leaves a message on her phone, which is presumably destroyed, that he’s going deep into the city where the giant rampaging monster is still around, to try and rescue a girl he loves but treated like shit, who is probably already dead, and risking the lives of himself, his brother’s fiancé, his best friend, and some girl who’s just around to give Hud motivation or something. As opposed to just letting her take one for the team, and escaping the city unharmed with the exception of emotion damage from his brother’s death, and his girlfriend’s death. BUT WHATEVER!!

Actually, to go back to the bridge scene for a second, apparently there’s supposed to be a crossover between the potential sequel here. Like, there’s some other turd attached to a camera that catches Hud on camera. But in all the clustefuck, I can’t see it no matter how many times I watch this film. But this is a recurring thing in the movie, as I’ll point out later. Presumably the other guys is using the SECOND most sluttiest durable camera in the entire fucking world.

This is the point where Bob, the last man in america went: “WHAT THE FUCK?!”

Oh wait, sorry, that was me.

I can accept a giant monster impervious to bullets. I can accept that the blonde wasted bitch is an integral part of the plot, however, what the fuck are the parasites that congeal off the monster and start eating people? What the fuck is that? It doesn’t make any goddamn sense! I mean what the fuck are they for one? What the fuck do they come from?

There is no animal that can have other organisms that spawn off its back, that will start eating people and their bites make the people explode. Where does that come from? An impossible to defeat monster is enough.

What J.J. Abrahms does here he does just to try and increase the futility the military has to defeat this creature. It gets no explanation as for why they are there, and thus hurls the viewer out of the experience.

Well not really. If you were to later in the film explain WHY and HOW those critters come off the monster, bite people and make them explode, then maybe you can get a viewer to accept them. But he doesn’t explain it, and the people therefore don’t accept it. It simply remains ridiculous.

Also, an immigrant runs up to Hud and explains the entire movie and everything that’s going on. But he’s speaking a foreign language. So the mystery remains unsolved.

Eventually they get to the subway system. WOOOHOO!! Running thought the subway, a straight shot, where tiny critters that fall off a giant critter can come, climb on ceilings apparently, bite you, and make you explode, while it’s completely dark.

But don’t worry! The camera has a flashlight!

.....Okay...

And it also has NIGHTVISION!!!!

....What?

So not only is it the most durable camera in the world, the sluttiest camera in the world, but it can also do anything you could ever want it to do ever. It’s like a swiss army camera.

Also, those bug things attack. Cause they have to show up to attack the survivors at some point. (Lol. There’s 4 of them.) Lily and Hud almost get eaten, but Rob and Marlena save them respectively. Unlike Rob though, Marlena lacks the grace to not get bitten. Gee. I wonder what’s gonna happen. Granted, at this point you don’t know she’s gonna explode, but whatever.

Luckily, they find some Aquafinia. HOORAY!! That’ll save them! Seriously. Beyond all things, this movie is a big corporate whore. Aquafinia, Nokia, Spongebob, it’s completely filled with product placement. I would understand that you would see products in New York, which is practically one big corporate whore, but they make it so blaringly obvious. It hurls you out of the experience. In the scene where Jason gets killed, you flow through several emotions; Empathy for Rob and Lily, panic that the monster is there, fear fo Hud’s life as he tries to outrun the collapsing bridge, and then you have a big sign saying “SEPHORA!” staring you in the face when everything starts to calm down, which immediately ruins the scene, where you’re supposed to catch up with everything that just happened.

Ugh.

MORE STUFF!!!

Lol. Bloomingdales. Marlena starts feeling pretty queasy. Could be that she lost some blood and got bitten by a monster, but she shrugs it off pretty quickly. Then the military show up. I guess they wanted to do some clothes shopping? Turns out they were using bloomingdales as a base of operations? I dunno.

Rob asks the military guy that seemed to be in charge of the particular squad to greet them if they could help him rescue his friend, presumably; Beth. The military guy responds by saying: “Yeah. No. About that, we kinda don’t want to go there, cause there’s a fucking giant monster there destroying everything.” ....That’s not an exact quote.
Lily asks: “Do you know what it is?”
Military guy responds: “If they know, they ain’t tellin me. Whatever it is, it’s winning.”

I blame J.J. Abrahms. He did kinda create a monster that was immune to bullets, missles, fire, nukes, parts of buildings collapsing on them, an extremely long tail and arms, things that fall off it and make people explode by biting them:

SPEAKING OF WHICH!

More military “ARG!!!”ing, as they treat the civilians like they’re morons who don’t understand that there’s GRAVE DANGER and a giant immortal monster around the city, and then Marlena tells Hud: “...I don’t feel so good.”

Someone yells: “BITE!!! WE GOT A BITE!!!!” And chaos erupts. With no explanation.

Now, the first time me and my friend saw this, from what we could tell, Marlena was dragged off by some Hazmat guys who had I guess just been standing around off screen waiting for someone to yell “BITE!”, dragged her off to a containment thing, where she turned into a bear and exploded.

That’s what we could tell. I guess you’re supposed to watch the movie again to really see what’s going on completely, but if that’s our impression of what happened, and you didn’t explain what happened, then people are going to think your movie is S.A.F. Which is a professional acronym that stands for: ‘STUPID AS FUCK.’

Anyway, the military guy takes them away and starts telling them that if they want to go save Beth, they can go, if they hurry. The helicopter leaves at 6AM, and if they aren’t out of there at that point, then they’re gonna be there when the nuke hits.

BTW, there’s a nuke. And they’re gonna try hitting the monster with it.

And so, they carry on to Beth’s apartment building, which is leaning against another apartment building, and at any point it could tilt, fall over, and kill everyone left alive in the place. So they go up the still stable apartment, cross over on the roof, and find Beth, with a metal pipe sticking out of her shoulder. Miraculously she’s still alive, and MORE miraculously, she’s the only human in the place.

That’s right, in both two full apartment buildings in NewYork City, there’s not one other human living or dead in the place. I guess you can assume that the living ones got out of there, but really? No dead people? And why didn’t the still alive ones perhaps go to rescue Beth beforehand? Well WHAT FUCKING EVER.

So they peel her off the pipe or something, then try to escape the way they came, by crossing the roof and climbing down 60 flights of stairs.
.....Okay.

Also, they run across one of those bug things, cause why not? I guess it would be more ridiculous if they just showed up once. But, no one gets bitten, so it’s all good.

And they get to the military in time to escape. Lily gets sent on a different helicopter with what look like a bunch of other military guys. I guess the military thinks it’s more important to get themselves out before the civilians. So....okay.

Then Rob, Hud, and Beth get sent on a different helicopter, which watches as the monster gets hit by missles. ...Why the helicopter is so close to the monster, I don’t know. I guess the pilot was just curious or something.

Surprise surprise, the monster isn’t dead, attacks the helicopter, which then gets sent spiraling down as everyone on board screams. The camera flitzes out for a second, but since it’s the most sturdiest, sluttiest, camera in the world that can also do anything you could ever want it to do ever, it miraculously survives, as well as Hud, Beth and Rob, who’s only severe injuries from a helicopter crash is that Rob’s leg seems to be broken. Or something. We never see it, and we’re never told. So whatever.

Hud drops the camera to help Rob up to his feet. Then runs back to go get it. Rob and Beth then scream in unison: “HUD! NO!!!” Hud takes the camera, and looks up. He and the monster decide to have a staring contest. Hud wins, and because the monster is the biggest sore loser ever, decides to eat Hud. Well, half of Hud. The other half gets dropped and lands on the ground. And the monster leaves? Cause Rob and Beth run to Hud, presumably to see whether his upper half is still alive or not. It isn’t, But the most sturdiest, sluttiest, camera in the world that can also do anything you could ever want it to do ever survives and Rob takes it.

Then they wrap up the love story, leaving the monster plot unfinished. They cut to the Cony island thing, (((BTW they went to Cony Island and it’s been flicking back and forth between the monster event and Beth and Rob’s trip to Cony Island))) and apparently you can see something in the background falling into the ocean that wakes up the monster? But no matter how many times I watch this scene, I don’t see it at all. Not one bit. You have to know that it’s coming. And you have to know where it’s coming from. And you have to have like 40/40 vision or something. This leads to the end, where I guess Bob, the last man in America really went insane and added credits to the end of the movie. Also a voice over plays backwards: “It’s still alive” after the nuke had hit it.

WELL WHAT THE FUCK?

Conclusion:

That’s pretty much a summary of the whole movie (The summary I gave. Not the ‘What the fuck’ line, though that can certainly apply). The monster doesn’t get any explanation for why it’s there. The bugs don’t get any explanation. There’s no resolution on how they kill the monster, or how the monster kills everyone everywhere. I guess they could do something in the sequel if they decide to make one, but this is not something you do in a monster movie. Especially when you advertise it as a monster movie. As it stands, it’s really a romance movie with a monster thrown in to teach them about love and how you should just abandon your loved ones if you don’t want to get nuked and all your friends killed. Sure you don’t get laid, but you don’t get killed either and can find some other girl to give you sex. You can even pull the: “I tried to save her, but was too late..” card. But I guess that’s not the point.

Now, despite all the ridiculous things that happened in the movie, I can’t really accuse it of bad writing. Despite the ridiculousness, I must say that this is probably what it would be really like if you were in a monster movie. Not knowing what the fuck was going on the entire time, and never knowing. Also, the characters all feel very real to me. The relationships between characters feel very real and normal people would probably act like that. One of my favorite lines in the movie go as thus, when they have beth and are trying to get to the military in time to escape:

“Hey! Rob! When did the military say they were leaving?!”
“06 hundred hours Hud!”
“What time is that?!”
“6 o’clock!”
“Right! Yeah! I knew that!”

Despite all the shit that was going on, they retained their personalities and still acted like normal people would. Rather than whiny bitches screaming at every noise, or masculine heroes fighting off every dangerous element at every turn.

Also, the writing must be good because all the viral advertising fits in with the movie without any contradictions (at least none that I know of. But I assume that if they did do a bad job with it, it would have spread across the internet by now.) So I think I can assume that they had very good writers. So, rather than accuse them of bad writing, I’ll accuse them of STUPID writing.

SPEAKING of the viral advertising, that’s a major part of this movie. Remember that slutty bitch? No. Not the camera. The slutty bitch that was on the couch passed out? Yeah. The one that was a major plot point? Apparently she was thus, because her boyfriend, who worked for a hippie group that combated the Slusho corporation, which was a drink manufacturer, which used some nasty chemicals that ended up creating the cloverfield monster. The guy was kidnapped and he had a package sent to her with some evidence that he told her not to eat. Being the genius that she was, she thought it was his way of breaking up with her, ate the stuff, and that’s why she was passed out at the party, not because she was pissed drunk.

Okay, there’s more to it than that, but what counts is the movie. This sequence of viral videos explains half the premise of the movie right there. And it’s completely left out of the movie. Aside from Jason wearing a Slusho t-shirt.

The point is, what is J.J. Abrahms trying to sell? Half the content was left out of the movie, and left in the viral advertising. The movie is what counts. If the movie is bad, the story is bad. No one counts the Star Wars books as part of the movie series, why should we count the viral advertising?!

J.J. Abrahms does two things really well: Hype, and building up curiosity. Take his movie trailer Super 8 for example. JUST as you’re about to see what comes out of the train cart that is apparently so dangerous it’s being housed by the military, the camera cuts away and you don’t see it. This builds curiosity. It’s like telling someone: “This is the best lolipop I’ve ever had. Want some? WELL YOU CAN’T! AND YOU HAVE TO WAIT A YEAR! AND WE PROBABLY AREN’T GOING TO GIVE IT TO YOU THEN ANYWAY!”

Then the viral advertising builds hype. Super 8 has it’s own Slusho thing with it’s Rockett Poppeters or something. They’re popsicles. Or something. So I guess they’re radioactive and they caused Super 8 monster that has telekinesis.

So Cloverfield the movie isn’t bad when you look at it for what it is. A romance movie. The hype and expectation really ruined it. Building up curiosity, and then not satisfying it, really pisses people off, however, it DOES get people to rewatch your movie to see what happens.

So to sum up. Cloverfield = Alright, J.J. Abrahms = a money hungry, selfish turd who deserves to be bitten, turned into a bear, and exploded.






Also, on Word perfect, this came out to about 9 pages.

I remember watching this on opening night, we all like wtf this stupid shit not even worth our money really

It was pretty lame. Everyone went into it with the wrong mindset.

We were all thinking "Cool! A monster movie!"

As opposed to what it was: "Cool! A love story! With some monsters occasionally!"

Never seen this movie, probably won't now.

Not bad.
It was kind of cool how you were able to admit that there were parts of the movie that weren't bad. That takes something!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go turn into a bear and explode.

Stiggs wrote:Speaking of which, they DO show a car on fire. Now how does a giant monster about 8 blocks away cause that to happen? Maybe someone went: “Well, we’re all dead. May as well fulfill my dream of lighting my car on fire and watching it explode!”

hahaha

Well, I can't say I think Cloverfield is a bad movie. I've watched it a few times, and enjoyed it enough to keep watching it. So I like the movie. But the stuff surrounding it can fuck right off. If they do a sequel, they need to answer more about the monster, rather than leave it up to interpretation, or trying to figure it out.

So I hate J.J. Abrahms. Not the movie.

So the movie is okay then?

Yeah. It's worth seeing. But keep in mind that your initial reaction will be: "WHAT THE FUCK!?"

Right I'll have to borrow it from a friend next time I talk to him.