Cloverfield - the second screening

A few nights ago I watched Cloverfield for the first time, on my laptop. In bed. At around 1 am. It was a bit of a trip. I was tense. I cared about the characters. I was wowed by the monster. I enjoyed the experience. A lot. I went to sleep at about 2:20 am, but not before looking out the window at the moonlit night and wondering ... would something arise from beneath this prairie soil? Hmmm.

Tonight, with my brother who, after a few months apart, was out to visit and had not seen it, I watched it again. This time through I laughed more often, and was a lot less tense. I was more aware of the way the camera jerked around a lot, as well as how the movie (the script and the camera work) does not take itself too seriously. And for that I respect this film a great deal!

If you can manage the herky-jerk-handicam genre of it, watch it. And don't take it seriously. And notice all the references to the other monster films. And enjoy the fun the filmmakers must have had with all the money they used to make it look like the whole thing was shot on a video-8 camera. And suspend your disbelief that three of the characters survive the helicopter crash, and that the camera and the tape survive a "hammer-down" bombing of Manhatten to flatten the monster.

(Of course if you've watched it for that long, you'll have already accepted that the monster is "possible" and that it's "possible" that we're just ants, or mites, or molecules, or atoms swirling about in the cosmos, vulnerable to the appetites of whatever monster might be out there - this monster looks suspiciously like an irradiated ant - some sort of massive insect.)

Watching Cloverfield is an exercise in tenacity, and imagination. You have to manage your stomach, and you have to believe. But if you've watched The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, or Star Trek, or Star Wars (or Jane Austen for that matter) you should only have to deal with your stomach. Your imagination has already been penetrated. You are no longer a "realism is all that I can handle" virgin.

Ride report

in: -9'C wind S 10 ks

out: -8'C wind S 12 ks