Sign in to follow this  
Ben X

Cloverfield Movies [please tag spoilers!]

Recommended Posts

Loved Cloverfield, and just watched 10 Cloverfield Lane which was also great. There's now a third one in production which, as with Lane, was written as an original movie but will now be part of the very loose Cloverfield universe.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've never actually got around to watching Cloverfield, but I loved 10 Cloverfield Lane.  This essay on it was something I found really useful for going deeper on just how well it handles an abuse narrative through each of its acts.  It's the rare movie that is so much smarter than one would ever expect from it on the surface. 

 

(It's also reinforces my belief that JJ Abrams is at his best when he's producing and supporting others rather than in the driver seat himself).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I really enjoyed JJ Abrams' directing on Alias, LOST, MI3 and Star Trek (and to a certain extent Force Awakens), but I won't get into that.

 

Thanks for the article, it's very good. (I don't even think one needs this reading to appreciate

the ending

, but there you go.)

 

I recommend Cloverfield but bearing in mind it's a totally different movie and one that's only about as smart as one would expect. Also, some people hate found-footage movies, so be warned it is that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There's so much potential in 10 Cloverfield Lane and a lot of really good moments and choices, but I think it telegraphs all it's story beats way too hard to work at all as a thriller.

 

It'd have impact if there were any moments where John Goodman didn't come across like a completely unstable creep. Every time he's onscreen the eeeeeriieeeee music revs up just to let the audience know "Hey, don't trust this guy!" Instead of building dread over ambiguity of his mental state, I spent the entire film just waiting for the final moments to happen. And what should be a great mid-film twist (the insane guy who kidnapped you isn't actually lying about the world ending) is spoiled by the mere fact that they named it Cloverfield. 



 

Love the acting, really hate the last ten minutes that feel bolted on from another movie. It's not just that she fights aliens (something I don't think is at all necessary for the exploration of abuse) but she fights aliens in a really poorly staged (and poorly lit) sequence full of the kind of bad special effects and shaky cam nonsense the entire rest of the film felt like a rebuttal of. It feels way more like studio interference than a natural conclusion of her arc.

 

Didn't see the first film because while I love the concept of found footage, basically no films that utilize it take the premise seriously.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm going to change the thread name to warn people of spoilers, unless everyone would prefer to tag their posts.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't like JJ Abrams or the movies he directs. Strangely I've for some reason seen everything he has directed except Super 8. Seems as producer he seems to do better. Cloverfield was ok, though I lost interest after the cause of everything was unveiled and after that the movie was just not that great.

 

Spoiler

I didn't care for the aliens that much. I knew beforehand that it would be a kind of Gojira ripoff, but the alien bugs reveal and all that didn't really interest me.

 

I saw 10 Cloverfield Lane a few months ago and I liked that quite a lot more, John Goodman was great!

 

Spoiler

Also I really like how they managed to keep the movie together by just mainly having three characters and lots of creepy tension as John Goodman really was a bastard in this one. The real revealing connection to Cloverfield was kept nicely just to the very end which was also nicely done as it wasn't overused. If it would've had too much about the aliens then I would've ended up feeling like with Cloverfield. Though, it would've been maybe a better ending if she would've died and not just went like a superhero beating an alien ship with a single Molotov cocktail even though her leg was busted.

 

Though yeah, having Cloverfield in the name is a bit on the nose, they just clearly wanted in marketing to show everyone that this movie is connected to the found footage movie. It could've been a nicer reveal to not have it in the movie title and have the Cloverfield reference appear somehow else just inside the movie.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think you may be overestimating the links between the two movies:

 

It's still not completely clear whether the Cloverfield kaiju is an alien or not, and either way it's not necessarily the same as the ones in 10CL - they certainly look and act differently, and if they hadn't put Cloverfield in the title I wouldn't have made the connection at all. Abrams et al are still mainly referring to these as anthology films rather than explicitly linked, although that may be subterfuge of course. The ARGs etc put them in the same universe through a shared dodgy Japanese company, but that's about it at the moment.

 

More may be revealed one the next one comes out...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this