On obscuring a narrative, and the benefits thereof

This is my Cloverfield review. It’s going to get long-winded, and quite probably very off-track at some points. It’s also going to have spoilers, so stay above the fold if you want to remain pure.

My main expectation for the film was that there would be a giant monster involved, though I’d speculated that they might manage to never actually show us the whole thing, just suggestions, fleeting glimpses, and aftermath at best. Giant monster: check. From here on out, spoilers.

I also guessed (based on a tip from a coworker friend) that the timeline would be not entirely chronological, which seemed like a very JJ Abrams thing to do — not that I’ve actually seen any LOST, mind you.

Lots of people die in giant monster movies. Usually not the “main” characters, though. Cloverfield established a small ensemble cast, with Hud as the eye of the audience, and proceeded to eliminate all but one — Lily, not even the main character — throughout the course of the movie. Gritty realism has been a fad in movies of late (Casino Royale, war movies for the past several years) so it only makes sense to show the “realistic” view of a giant monster attack; that is, massive casualties.

The direct implication of the “metadata” at the beginning is that this is only a small piece of evidence in a larger story. It’s the foundation of a sequel if ever I saw one, but I see a chance to do something completely different with the story. I don’t want just a sequel.

The movie was a primary source for a fictional event — there was no constructed plot, no grand story, just one guy filming his lovesick friend’s attempt to save the love of his life. One videotape labeled “recovered at site#[whatever], codename Cloverfield, formerly known as Central Park.”

The movie had a viral advertising campaign from early on, complete with at least one in-universe website (this is where I admit I didn’t follow it much and don’t know the details). The base of some really spectacular chaotic fiction is already there — all JJ Abrams needs to do is keep providing the world with primary sources for this fictional universe of his. Letters from the front.

While I wasn’t strictly accurate in my guess that we’d never see the actual monster, as I left the theater I mulled it over in my mind and realized I wasn’t as far off as I could have been if the nature of the movie hadn’t been was it was. We never saw a complete shot of the creature. We saw a limb smash a bridge. We saw it crawling between buildings, obscured by one or more at any given time. We saw a giant maw rushing toward the camera. We saw a huge torso towering over Hud just before his death. Just like the movie never provided a clear explanation of the bigger picture, the camera never provided a clear view of the monster. Even its parasites, offspring, whatever they were, always had motion blur or bodies obscuring them, or were presented as a shadow play against a tarp, or as grainy specters in the camera’s night-vision.

I would love to never get a straightforward, high-budget action flick out of Cloverfield. It would be a great vehicle to give alternative reality games more visibility. And frankly, it would just be made of awesome.