Photo via coops amazing toy collection

We’ve been pretty excited about cloverfield ever since the trailer first leaked onto the internet. It’s probably enough to say that the film lives up to those seemingly impossible expectations and delivers a masterclass in how to make an intelligent, original popcorn movie.

It’s not perfect, the opening sections feels long (we’re just sitting around waiting for the monster to turn up and destroy everything!) and sometimes the reportage style conceit feels a little forced-but ultimately they are minor quibbles. Once it all kicks off (and btw you need to see this movie on the big screen!!) you get an incredibly visceral and affecting rollercoaster ride that manages to find it’s way past the patronizing cliches that plague many a mainstream movie.

The characters in the film are bystanders to the action, not the usual cookie cutter action heroes. It’s a film about the smallness of man, next to the enormity of their fate and the utter destruction
all around. Perhaps understandably the clear references to 9/11 have proven controversial- (I found the subway sections eerily reminiscent of the 7/7 phone tube footage) but the film never feels exploitative. Rather by defining the characters so early as powerless participants in the much larger drama happening all around, we arrive at a greater truth. That the best response to senseless violence is to draw closer to the ones we love, and so remain undefeated.

Wild Rumpus-Musical Blaze Up (Rub-n-Tug)*

*re-up styles