"Cloverfield" by Matt Reeves

Sometimes it really feels like I'm working in a space ship and not on a cruise ship - we are mostly cut out from the world for 6 months and no wonder that when we return, we have no idea about what happened, not to mention new movies or music - both TV and Internet are something we can use very, very rarely (when you return to your cabin dead tired after midnight or occasionally in some port outside) so I accepted that the world turns around with or without me while I'm sailing and usually just catching up with things once I'm back on dry land. Imagine my surprise when I discovered this 2008. movie last night and seriously asked myself WTF how came I missed this one completely, where on earth I was? 

"Cloverfield" is one of those movies that came inspired by legendary "Blair Witch Project", which means its filmed as almost documentary with a hand-held camera from some non-proffesional, ordinary guy's point of view. In itself this is not new, because we have seen it already and his time we won't be fooled into believing its a real story - the main catch here is that this movie has far bigger budget and its filmed in the streets of New York with people screaming around, lots of special effects and perhaps sadistically it plays with our fears & traumas about terrorist attacks. Except its not terrorists but some monster Godzilla who starts destroying New York right in the middle of otherwise plain and mild May evening when everybody is going on around their usual business: we are treated with hand-camera filmed farewell party organized for certain young businessman who is leaving for Japan soon. Everybody (including the businessman) is young, trendy, nicely dressed and completely self-centered in that particular way we see around nowadays, kind of people who are too busy talking abut themselves and taking pictures on their mobile phones to actually pay any attention to the world around them. This is so cleverly done that I don't think it was accidental - director Matt Reeves and scriptwriter Drew Goddard are both way too intelligent not to use this somehow subversively as the commentary of society today and what a world we live in - there are no heroes here and absolutely everybody (except perhaps Lizzy Caplan as Marlena) is annoying collateral damage, we follow them not because we root for them but because they are necessary for the story to go on. The fact that we don't see the monster(s) until much later in the movie adds to very effective horror but honestly, the characters are so annoying that we can hardly wait for them to shut up, stop chattering nonsense and to die. Characters aside, the movie is actually very exciting and you can't stop watching it, even though nothing is really explained - the origins of this danger is the mystery and it works very well because of it, we are forced making our own conclusions.