29! bar steady 30.17 0mph NNW dewpoint 22 Spring?
Last Quarter Moon of Growing
Just finished watching Cloverfield. This was a clever take on the horror flick. It used Blair Witch hand-held camera and concealment with high production values off in the distance. The affect is a sense of immediacy and immersion in the experience. In this case we don’t know much about the monster, in fact nothing outside its destructiveness at first. If we didn’t know we were watching a horror movie, we might think that New York had experienced a multiplied terrorist attack on the scale of many 9/11’s.
The monster convinces because it’s alien in form, though it most closely resembles a bat with a long tail and ferocious teeth. It also convinces because we see it from a distance and are most aware of its presence as the army races believably into action against it. Unlike most monster movies where the army seems called into shoot guns because that’s what we know how to do, in this instance it appears desparate, almost hopeless. This makes it seem real.
Matt Reeves, the director, wanted to give America a monster as iconic as Godzilla is to the Japanese. I don’t think he succeeded on that score. Besides, we have King Kong. Who is more iconic than that giant gorilla?