Cloverfield

New York must be one of the most disaster stricken cities ever. King Kong, Several alien invasions, The green goblin, Magneto, warriors, Godzilla, Cosmo Kramer and of course the monster known only as Clover.

To say that Cloverfield is a better monstermovie than Godzilla (1954) is tantamount to blasphemy, but if I have to be honest, I have to say that I like Cloverfield more.

It is not because of the special effects or some age thing. Cloverfield wins purely pn pacing. Where Godzilla gets stuck for long periods of time in some kind of Story vacuum. The relationships between the characters becomes its own little movie within the monstermovie.

In Cloverfield, the relationship between the protagonist and the damsel in distress becomes the catalyst that keeps the movie going. The monster becomes this unbeatable force wich our hero is willing to cross paths With to save the one he loves.

Where Monsters was basicly a tragic love story with monsters in it, and Godzilla was a monstermovie with a love triangle in it, Cloverfield trancends genre perfectly and uses the monster to further the human story.

I also love the direction, specifically in the first act where they are all at the party. It is not often that a movie manages to involve the extras and make them feel like integral characters in the universe of these four main characters. The way our leads casually interacts with a core group of extras and how they are impemented into the procedings of the party makes it seem as though these people are more than just background.

If there is one thing I initially did not like, it eas the fact that the movie is a "found footage" movie. That medium had, at the time, been over saturated with bad movies and it felt like an easy way to lure in the crowd by saying "yeah, come see Cloverfield. We are just as cool as all those other movies". It felt loke they drank to much of the Hollywood Kool-aid, but in the end They use it to their advantage and it becomes one of the better "found footage movies" to date.

Cloverfield wasn't just a good movie though, it was a intriguing concept. The way they used viral marketing to build upon the mystery sorrounding the monster, months before the movie premiered.
There were the fictional company Tugrauto, who were suspected of awakening the monster with their deep sea exploration. Videoblogs, articles and rumors all created to build upon the mystery and made it almost as fleshed out as some world building fantasy novels.

All this, with the movie as its centerpiece, made Cloverfield become so much more than just 90 minutes of explosive fun. It became one of my favourite multimedia experiences ever.