Just got back from seeing Cloverfield with
Pretty damn good — definitely Abrams’ exorcism of post-9/11 trauma, in the same way that Gojira was a reflection of the early-50s Japanese psyche.
The best thing about it is that the monster attack is really more of a background element — the focus of the tale is how a handful of New Yorkers deal with the chaos.
The whole thing is filmed, Blair Witch-style, as a found document, a hand-held camera recording. As such, there’s no score — although if you wait through the end credits, you are rewarded with a track called “Roar! (Cloverfield Overture)” by Michael Giacchino (who does pretty much all of J.J. Abrams’ music). It’s a brilliant pastiche of monster movie bombast — especially the classic Godzilla march. Once that sucker is available ANYWHERE, I’m grabbing it. I doubt there will be a soundtrack release, since it’s the only piece composed for the film, and the only music aside from some source music that appears in the first 10 minutes of the film during the going away party….but hopefully they think to release “Roar!” as a single on iTunes.
Good stuff.
I’m eagerly awaiting that myself.
I thought about 98% of the movie was great. I felt, however, that a few of the images were too reminiscent of 9/11, to the point where I felt like I was being deliberately manipulated. Didn’t ruin the movie by any means; it just bugged me for a few minutes.
I had a lot of fun with it. Part Saving Private Ryan, part zombie survival horror minus the zombies, part Godzilla movie. An interesting cinematic recipe.
There was an Easter Egg whisper at the very end of the credits. We caught it, but had no idea what it was: apparently it’s a distorted radio transmission that sounds like “Help us”, but in reverse it says “It’s still alive.”
We just got back, and I’m waiting for my sick headache to subside. I think the guy next to me got up to go puke and then came back.
The obvious 9/11 references annoyed me a little but in general I loved it – then again I was raised on “Monster Week on the 4:30 movie AND I own at least the crappy American release of every Godzilla movie ever made.
And when you find ROAR online, PLEEEEZE post a link! I NEEDS it!
saw it…
loved it…only thing I could really bitch about was that I wanted to see MORE of the critter…
I know you have more sense than me so you probably won’t fall foul of it – but I did a google search for the track you mentioned and foun d a nice link to what looked like a youtube style video claiming to have the song (and I presumed either the closing credits or a fan-made montage of something or other with the song overlaid).
Anyway, I clicked the video and it asked me to download an upgarde of software which I then did and loaded it. Turned out the software wasn’t software but a couple of .dll viruses in disguise. Luckily one of the shields I have on my computer noted they were trying to change some directories or something and blocked them for manual confirmation. Obviously I realised at this point that something was up and didn’t confirm. I couldn’t delete them from the machine though so had to check them out on my laptop and then load a new virus checker to delete them permanently. Both viruses were first discovered on 17th January so were pretty new.
Anyway, I’m all safe and sorted now but won’t be checking for the song on non-You Tube sites for now :p
Cloverfield doesn’t open on this side of the pond for another two weeks I think and I am SO looking forward to seeing it :)
I’ll also try and remember to stay through to the end :p
I am pleased that you liked it, I’ve been wanting to see it as I love me some J.J. Abrams but was worried that it’d be cheesy and dumb. I trust your take on entertainment media and will make plans to see it now.
Yikes. That’s no fun.
ROAR bootleg
A fairly decent bootleg of ROAR can be found here:
http://www.members.shaw.ca/tach94/overture.mp3
Re: ROAR bootleg
Meh. It’s only about half of it, from the sound of it. (The track started with the long build-up of the “booms” first, as I recall.)
It is worth it for people who haven’t heard it, though.