Under The Knife – DVD Review – Cloverfield

by Awesome The Hedgehog

(17.01.08…I bet no one will get that).

WARNING: This is an inside out review of the special-steelbook HMV edition (UK) of Cloverfield and DOES contain plot spoilers. If you have not seen this film already, please skip the review of the actual movie and proceed to the extras.

Something Has Found Us. On the 18th of January 2008, the most internet hyped sleeper hit movie struck theatres everywhere and left a massive impact and a question that everyone pondered as they saw the movie, What Happened? The truth is, we’ll never know. This (most likely) once in a lifetime film documents the case designate: Cloverfield, in which an unknown creature attacked Manhattan and soon after most of New York.

The shocking evidence was caught on tape, which is a great medium for presenting a realistic monster flick and making it more interesting, I mean the camera really obscures your vision and as you see through the eyes of Hud, you really know all there is to know about him by what he does with the camera. The realism of the film adds to each characters depth, no matter how early their demise was. J.J. Abrams is clearly a visionary genius with such thought provoking hit shows like Lost and action packed ones like Alias, but his dabble in the monster movie world will be one that won’t be forgotten shortly.

This is a review of the HMV Exclusive Steel book 2-Disc Special Edition DVD of Cloverfield, directed by Matthew Reeves and produced by J.J. Abrams. Each section will give a rating for both discs and each of it’s content, but the real verdict will be whether this movie is good or not and is it something to watch again? Hopefully I can answer that.

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DISC 1

CLOVERFIELD (MOVIE):

I fucking love this film, because it’s highly original and it pays homage to all the great monster classics throughout cinema, like King Kong, Godzilla, Them!, etc. Unlike most monster movies like Godzilla (1998), this movie is incredibly dark because of it’s extreme realism, the fact that this whole film was shot on a handy cam further shows that this is imaginably possible and that’s the thrill of it!

Another great thing about it is that it’s all a big guessing game, when will the monster jump out? When will someone else die? But, some other scenes are clearly obvious of what’s happening despite no signal from the cast, such as the end scene where Rob and Beth make their way to the bridge. You can tell right there and then that this dark film will have a dark ending with no survivors, the impeding doom you feel when watching is quite surprising.

This movie will go down in history for two reasons: It’s hype and it’s mystery. You’ll never really know what happened on the night of the party, the camera is the only evidence. The lack of closure is realistic and it’s nice to have a change from all those movies where the plot has to be explained for 5 minutes. But, if you’re extremely geeky, you can check out the selection of viral marketing sites and movie frame stills to uncover the secrets.

That’s the great thing about Cloverfield; a lot of people have been saying it’s a film to only watch once. But, I think it’s a film to watch many times, because if you don’t really want to know the origin behind the monster and the film, you really didn’t enjoy the movie that well. Looking back at the film and checking for any clues, especially on the DVD is a great way to uncover the mystery.

VERDICT: 10/10 – A visionary experience like no other, with many iconic scenes. Awesome!

COMMENTARY (by Director Matt Reeves):

This guy doesn’t fuck around when he does the commentary. None of that 1-18-08 mystery crap, no secrets which he can’t give away, no talk about hype, no viral marketing talks, just down to earth, straight up talking about how he directed the film, what it was like on the sets and how the idea came to be.

Reeves gives a lot of info on how the editing worked, which proved hard due to the nature of the filming, for example smart cuts were made when the camera went haywire and random if some explosion happened to transition from actual locations in New York to sets in Paramount Studios.

Overall, it’s an interesting commentary, but would have been nice to see J.J. Abrams lay down some secrets, but Director Matt Reeves proves he can carry it by himself and offer some great info on behind the scenes, with no viral marketing crap. He’s always constantly talking, which is a good thing to…just listen to the Spider-Man commentary.

VERDICT: 8/10 – Different take on Cloverfield, though it may break the realism of the film, it’s an interesting listen.

CLOVERFIELD – SUPPLIMENTAL FILES:

This is one of those special features on DVDs where you watch the movie and when an icon appears, you press enter to watch behind the scenes featurettes regarding that scene. This is no different in Cloverfield, when the battery icon appears do the same thing and watch these 2-3 minute behind the scenes docs on the film.

My annoyance with this feature is that you don’t really want to interrupt the film, unless you’re a die-hard fan and want to find out everything. That being said that battery icon appears each time for roughly 5 seconds and despite it showing up brighter than the film, it can be easy to miss. Still, you can just watch all of them (apparently) on www.CloverfieldFiles.com so whatever, really.

VERDICT: 6/10 – An interesting feature, but mainly for die-hard fans only.

D1 – EASTER EGGS:

Let’s see now, I thought it would be cool to rate the Easter eggs too and I’ll tell you how to find them. To get the Easter eggs on the first disc, go to Scene Selection and choose 3-16, now wait exactly 1 minute and 16 seconds (no idea why) and a secret new scene will appear named ’17’, go to it to acess the supplemental files (apparently different from the movie feature).

These are basically just a bunch of videos from the Cloverfield ARG (Alternate Reality Game) such as Slusho’s website advertisement and Jamie’s video logs to Teddy Hansen. These are sorta pointless and boring, especially since you can already see ALL (only a select few are viewable) of the videos on the sites.

What is interesting though, is the News Reports in different languages, which offer tiny snippets of info on the origins of the monster, definitely worth a quick glance if you bothered to unlock the Easter eggs.

VERDICT: 5/10 – Pretty lousy viral videos, but the news flashes just make up for them.

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DISC 2

DOCUMENT 01.18.08: THE MAKING OF CLOVERFIELD:

This is a half hour documentary on the making of Cloverfield of course, but if you’ve already seen the Cloverfield – Supplemental Files than you aren’t missing much, as it is just repeated information, just from different people, with very little new info. The doc does, however show off a lot of the experiences of what the cast went though and hoe they felt about the movie, the most featured one being T.J. Miller.

VERDICT: 6/10 – More or less the same as Supplemental Files on Disc 1. But, watch this instead.

CLOVERFIELD VISUAL EFFECTS:

An inside look at how the special effects, CGI and stuff was made throughout the movie by a bunch of British folk. Boring, but if you’re a die-hard fan you can appreciate the effort and the design of each set piece well enough to watch the whole thing and enjoy it.

VERDICT: 4/10 – Meh. Only interesting for special effects fans.

I SAW IT! IT’S ALIVE! IT’S HUGE!:

A cool insight on the visual design and concept art of the monster, it’s only 5 minutes long, so it really should have been part of something else like the Supplemental Files.

VERDICT: 7/10 – Cool and short…but too short.

CLOVER FUN:

Outtakes of the film, brought to life by T.J. Miller (who is luckily a comedian) and malfunctioning set pieces, funny, but only worth watching once.

VERDICT: 8/10 – That guy with the Jew fro and goatee is hilarious.

DELETED SCENES:

Fun to watch, despite little variation from the actual film. The Jew fro guy appears to know a lot about Yaoi Hentai. It’s better to watch it without the commentary.

VERDICT: 7/10 – The best one is the second one.

ALTERNATE ENDINGS:

Disappointing, but really I didn’t expect much, considering the original ending had a lack of closure. It’s merely the Coney Island sequences that change a little. Much better insight with the commentary on.

VERDICT: 6/10 – I guess it’s just one of those features that had to be there, but I don’t think they’re that bad.

D2 – EASTER EGGS:

- Go to the Subtitles menu and go to ‘SVENSKA’ and press left, a helicopter button will highlight. This is of all the cast and crew saying ‘Rack ‘em and Pack ‘em, we’re phantoms in 15!’ Michael Stahl-David goes gay, J.J. Abrams becomes a manikin, Matt Reeves puts his helmet on backwards and T.J. Miller flexes his acting muscles. AWESOME!

- Go to the Alternate Endings menu and press left when highlighting the ALTERNATE ENDING 1 to go to a test screening for two shots of the film with commentary by Matt Reeves. Crudely done, it’s funny to watch.

- Go to the Deleted Scenes menu and press right on Congrats Rob, left on I Call That A Date and down on Special Features to see 3 videos of T.J. Miller improv with the actress who played Marlena. Funny stuff, especially the car scene.

VERDICT: 9/10 – Well hidden and much more funnier and interesting than the first disc.

DVD VERDICT

Disc 1: 8/10 – The movie is amazing, but the disc is let down by strange and pointless features, except for the commentary.

Disc 2: 9/10 – Great information and a lot of cool features, this just outshines the first disc because of all it’s awesome content.

OVERALL: 9/10 – Amazing DVD, definitely worth the money with so much content! Go down to HMV now and buy it!

P.S. Shout out to SavageBelmont who started this DVD Review trend.

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