Click Click, Boom

You. 

Yes, you. 

I know you’re there. 

Of course you would come back, one last time.  You’re there, just at the foot of the shadows, close enough to see, but not be heard.   You couldn’t resist it.  You had to make sure there was no chance of survival, but I am still here.  And though I cannot see you out there, watching; your presence is felt, but don't feel sorry for me.

You fumed.  You boiled.  You raged against the restraints of your own design, because you thought you knew better.  You warned me and I didn’t listen.  I got in the path and paid the price.  But I survived the blast and you slunk off into the darkness.  But that wasn’t good enough.  You escaped only to come back and deal the final blow.   And as I knelt, gushing from my chest, you took one last swing just to make sure.  But don't feel sorry for me.

You built that cage, but who was it for?  Was it constructed to keep us out; the ones who sought to embrace the raw and awesome power of such a beautiful thing?  Or was it to keep you in, safe from your own monster.   I think that, locked away from your own existence after countless years of struggling to keep that beast in check, the hinges bent just enough to let something out.  You didn’t intend for it and it was the last thing you wanted, but it was almost inevitable.  It scared you enough to try and reinforce the door, but it was too late to stop it.  But don't feel sorry for me.

It’s much easier to keep something you think is so terrible locked away because you don’t have to witness the destruction and you don’t have to pick up the pieces when it goes ballistic and destroys everything in its path.   As long as it is under wraps nothing will go wrong.   We go about our business, blind to the power that bubbles just below the surface, because you know that time after time, there has been nothing but disaster left in its wake when it gets out.  It’s a wonder why it was ever created in the first place?

But what you don’t understand is that it didn’t have to be that way.   For every single ounce of rage, kept in that prison, there were twice as many in beauty and warmth.   And some may not know what it means to be in its presence.  It scares them.  But, I’ve seen it.  I felt it.  I know it was real, not just rumors told to me.  I hadn’t seen anything like it in so long that I went right towards it like a mosquito on the back porch heads towards a zapper.   And we all know how that ends for the bug.  But I didn’t care, because I thought I could control it.  I wanted to embrace it and see if I could harness it, because the same destructive force struggling to stay in your cage was slowly creeping out of mine.   

But you warned me.  Our mutually assured destruction was inevitable and I didn’t want to listen.  But you know what good lays inside those four walls and you can wield it like a master samurai.  I've seen it in practice. You choose not to.  Perhaps you’re scared to.  Perhaps you think that this will be the one time it turns on you and consumes you completely.   So, instead of it getting free, you chose the rage.  You chose to destroy, because it’s easier to just engulf those around you, leaving no traces, no chance for rebuttal.  But don't feel sorry for me.

I am destroyed.  I am here with a broken body, because I was wrong.   But while you will find some other prison to wall yourself up in, comfortable in the knowing that it’s safely away from those that wish to be in awe of what is truly there, behind the beast, I embrace mine.  I know its power and I know it’s meant to be free to influence and shape those around it.  It’s not a curse to have, it’s a gift.   It won’t be easy.  There will be times that I may not be able to control it and perhaps there will be the same destruction you left.  But you know as well as I do that there was a chance you were wrong;  that mutually assured destruction was not the outcome.  I showed you that.  In your life, you’ve seen how much others have taken advantage of that power and so maybe you think that it’s better to not ever go there, again.  Maybe someone out there has a better cage for it.   Maybe they’re better equipped.   Maybe they will just ignore it and you can go on about your business, silent and content in knowing that the monster is locked away from someone who could never fully appreciate it, but just wishes to keep it at bay.   

It’s the easy way out.  It’s lazy and you are so much stronger than that if only you’d look it right in its eyes.   There was another force willing to share in that burden.  It was there to temper yours, but you were too scared, or too far gone, and for that I feel sorry for you. 

The First Halloween *

“That house has its porch light turned on. Go ahead, Billy.” The young boy, dressed as a clown, approached the old house looking for a treat. As he walked he flopped his big shoes towards the front porch. He had remembered the rules his mother told him about trick or treating. If there are no lights lit, don’t go to that house and don’t eat any candy before you get home so that we can check it out. This was his first time trick or treating and Billy replayed those rules in his head as he walked. He also remembered his mother telling him that she would stand at the end of the yard, watching him. She wouldn’t let anything happen to him, she said. Feeling somewhat comforted by this, Billy continued to increase the distance between him and his mother.

It was only a few steps up to the door of the house. On the front porch he could see a chair which was being occupied by what resembled a scarecrow. It was a makeshift man made of straw wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. The buttons on the clothes strained to contain the straw which had been overstuffed into the garments. A brown bag, also stuffed with straw had a face scribbled on it with black magic marker. Billy thought the scarecrow looked silly and unreal and he chuckled a bit at its appearance. He looked back to make sure his Mother was still standing at the end of the walk, ready to run to his rescue. She waved at him and motioned for him to continue towards the door.

Billy topped the steps and saw that a bowl of candy sat on the porch, unattended. He looked towards the house and saw that the front door was open wide. He could see people moving around inside of the house and thought that maybe they had left their post briefly to fetch more candy or something else inside. He didn’t want to exhibit bad trick or treating etiquette by just taking a candy bar from the bowl and leaving. He wanted to ring the doorbell and show off his costume. He wanted to be proud of his clown get up and be paid for his cuteness in candy.

As Billy reached his tiny index finger out towards the doorbell, he never noticed the shape moving towards him. He only heard the sound of rustling straw and the stretching of nylon material on a creaky metal lawn chair. Immediately, to his right, the overstuffed straw man in the chair reached towards him and moaned a God awful sound that could only mean that he intended to eat the little boy. The silly face, scribbled with marker suddenly looked like it had sharp teeth and piercing eyes. Eyes that pierced into Billy’s being looking to suck the marrow of his soul.

The exchange took less than two seconds but Billy felt as if he was held captive on that porch for hours. Where was his mother? Why hadn’t she raced up the side walk to bludgeon this evil being with her handbag? Finally, the shock of seeing this seemingly seven foot tall scarecrow lunging at him wore off and Billy’s gelatinous legs solidified with a single purpose, run as far away from this monster as fast as possible. Billy tore off down the steps and up the sidewalk, his huge shoes flapping as if he would soon take flight. He raced towards the street where his mother stood looking at him. He could feel the arms of the scarecrow cutting through the air, continually trying to grasp at his neck, the foul hot breath of hell bearing down on his ears with the rotten smell of brimstone all around him. He dared not look back at his aggressor and shut his eyes and ran faster. At last he had escaped the clutches of the monster on the porch and took refuge behind the polyester pant legs of his mother.

A few minutes later, another young boy came trotting down the same street towards the house. On his way, he passed a mother consoling a little crying clown and he thought “Who dresses their child as Canio?” As he reached the top of the porch he could hear the elevated voices inside the house. Opening the front door, he made his way into the kitchen where a brown bag, stuffed with straw and sporting a silly face sat on the kitchen table as a teenager, a few feet away wearing the rest of the scarecrow costume explained himself to his mother. “Honestly, I never touched the kid.” He said, throwing his straw stuffed arms in the air.

“What happened?” The young boy asked his older brother.

“I dozed off for a minute on the porch. Some kid in a clown costume rang the doorbell and woke me up. When I reached into the bowl and asked if he wanted a candy bar, he freaked out and ran away, screaming. I could hear him crying all the way up the street.”

That was the last time my brother ever dressed up as a scarecrow and gave out candy on Halloween.






* This tale is based on an actual event that occurred when I was a kid. My brother thought it would have been fun to dress up like a scarecrow and pass out candy to trick or treaters. Although, the exchange and dialogue has been altered for dramatic effect, a kid did in fact approach come to our house for candy and was subsequently scared by the sudden movement of what was thought to be an inaminate object sitting in the chair next to him on the porch. I was out trick or treating at the time but heard the scream and saw the kid sobbing as he walked up the street, minutes later.

The Monster Takes Manhattan: A Cloverfield Review

In 1990, at the uninhibited age of 15, I did something I would probably never do again in my lifetime.  It was our school picnic at a local amusement park and I threw caution to the wind and rode The Rotor five times in a row.  To give you a brief idea of what this ride did, it spun.  You stood against the inside wall of this big drum, which spun fast enough that the floor could drop out from below you and you would stick to the wall.  For most people, one ride is enough to make you lose your funnel cake, but I had to do it multiple times to prove I was a man....because the girl I was with wanted to go that many times and I didn't want to appear weak.   It was the kind of ride that if you threw up, you could see a cool test of Newton’s laws conducted with a corn dog instead of an apple.  In the last 18 years I have developed a weak constitution when it comes to theme park rides, but I never thought I’d need Dramamine to watch a film.  For those of you living in a bunker in South Dakota, writing your manifesto, that film is Cloverfield. 

I've become a sort of fan of J.J. Abrams work.  I have been an avid fan of LOST since it aired in 2004.  Mysterious creatures toppling trees in the jungle, stoking the fires of your imagination to burn white hot with the worst possible image of what could be lurking behind the flora.  Strange devices and structures that seem to not be indigenous to a deserted island send the fan boys into a conspiracy theory tizzy on what they mean.  Basically, you are looking at a nondescript box, and J.J. teases you with clues as to what could be inside but never reveals it, wholly.  If Abrams was a seller on eBay, he'd be the king of the mystery box auction.   Here, the box is Manhattan and he slowly teases you with what is trying to rip through the box and gnaw off your face, but he never tells you.  That's for your mind to decide.  Sure, he gives you little glimpses of the beast, but never gives you an explanation for what it is or why it's tearing up Times Square.

That's the basic premise of Cloverfield.  The DOD recover a camera from the rubble of a bridge in Central Park that details the last hours of a group of friends in Manhattan during a going away party for Rob, who is leaving to start a new job in Japan.  His brother and friends host the party and use the camera to document it, unknowingly recording over Rob and his good friend/lover Beth sharing a "good day," starting from the bedroom of her father's apartment and ending at Coney Island.  Clips from that day are interspersed into the recording as the camera as the camera turns off from the present action.  During the party an unseen force attacks and begins to demolish the island forcing the main cast to flee the party and make plans for escape.  It's revealed in several shaky moments that a creature of unknown origin is doing the damage and efforts to escape the island become hindered.  As the creature and its little parasitic offspring kill off the characters during the attack, Hud, continues to document and speculate over the creature's origin and motives before eventually becoming a morning snack.  The military issue an endgame scenario called "hammerdown protocol" which will pretty much decimate most of New York City in an attempt to finally stop the monster.  Rob and Beth injured and out of time hole up under a bridge giving farewells and a final statement about the efficiency of the military's attack.  A garbled message, presumably from Rob, and recorded in reverse, probably from damage to the camera states, "It's still alive."  The camera ceases its recording of the attack and reverts back to a final scene from Coney Island, weeks before as a bookend. While seemingly unimportant, supposedly there is a clue here.  Knowing Abrams work, nothing is dismissed. 

Abrams assembled his production team from familiar faces in his past work. Drew Goddard, well known for his writing on LOST, Alias, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel, wrote the flick.  Director Matt Reeves, while relatively unknown in film with only two previous movie credits, helmed episodes of Felicity and the pilot episode of the great, yet underated Miracles.   The production takes the Godzilla recipe and throws it into a blender with a few other movie ingredients to make a nice batch of Slusho.  First we add a base of Jurassic Park to give us a foundation.  Our band of partygoers are faced with the task of making it from point "A" which is a party in Manhattan, to point "C" which is a rescue helicopter near Central Park, and along the way a giant monster continually chases them, causing destruction and providing them with architectural obstacles as they move through point "B", the leaning apartment of our hero's girlfriend.  We have one part from The Blair Witch Project to provide that shaky amateur cinematography feel.  Throw in a dash of Jaws, to give us that hint of monster which you see from obscured angles and shaky filming.  Add a hint of Miracle Mile to give us that essence of hindered progress and detoured directions with an aftertaste of doom and gloom.  Add to low heat for 15 minutes, bringing to a boil, slowly.  Garnish with motion sickness pills and serve.

First, I'll give you the good.  Cloverfield scores points with me for taking a genre of film or a style and taking it to a new level.  The "camcorder" or "handheld camera" film genre points back to Blair Witch as a source for inspiration.  Here, the concept is a going away party that is being documented when a disaster occurs.  Since, one of the characters was filming the party, already, it makes sense that he "documents" the attack.  The lack of importance with lighting and clear shots is a way to heighten the suspense as we never get a fully unobstructed shot of the monster.   It takes the viewer of a Godzilla movie and places them at street level.  The topography of Manhattan also serves to heighten tensions as we can't see what is causing destruction and we rely on others to fill in the gaps.  Listen closely to the early background dialogue as New Yorkers instantly feel that it is a terrorist attack.  The "handicam" approach also gives Abrams full permission to play on our imaginations, especially during one scene where Rob, Lilly, and Hud have to move Beth, who is impaled on a piece of rebar in her apartment.  The camera is set down just out of range of the action and the sounds and motion of Beth gave me my only reason for wanting to vomit as I imagined her sliding off of the bar.

I give Goddard credit in fleshing out the story in familiar Abrams fashion.  Abrams' previous works feature all sorts of elements such as bait and switch reveals, a snake in a mailbox, and manipulation of time through flashbacks to introduce important clues at just the right moment.  One of the biggest mysteries of Cloverfield is the origin of the monster.  Unfortunately, we have become a society of people who want to be spoiled, spoon fed answers to ambiguous ideas, and basically filmmakers' profit over marketing tie ins and fictional internet sites that piece together clues to what happens during the film.  I've seen arguments and theories over what the monster is and even an answer from Abrams and company fail to satisfy the audiences thirst for explanation.  Reeves has cleverly set up as an unintentional erasure of previous events on Rob's camera.  His daytrip with Beth to Coney Island gets copied over with the attack and only little bits of the previous footage remain, but offer a vital clue.  The last scene from the Coney Island footage reveals a large object falling from the sky splashing down into the water off shore.  Seeing as how the object is not as big as the monster we deduce that this object, possibly a satellite or space junk, has disturbed the creature's watery abode.   Just like a stampede of elephants spooked by a gunshot the behemoth makes its way out of the water and onto land like a bull in a china shop knocking over buildings and stepping on people.  Imagine an adolescent "Clovie" thrashing around at this unknown environment, trying to make sense of what woke it up.   Add military vehicles shooting at it and you've got a pissed off, disoriented leviathan, stumbling about Manhattan like a fawn on its first day of walking.

Now, let us look at the not so good.  Abrams' productions are fearfully treading into M. Night Shyamalan territory.  With Alias and Lost firmly planted in the lexicon of pop culture, he's starting to get a lot of exposure in the film industry.  While not directing or writing this movie, his footprint is all over it.  Mission: Impossible III was riddled with Abrams' style, apparent from the first scene. He's going on to do a reboot of the Star Trek franchise and just seeing Leonard Nimoy in the list confirmed cast members we can say with great certainty that there will be flashbacks and probably a twist that will be revealed by a flashback or some great piece of the puzzle will finally be put into place at the end of the movie.  Having this in mind, I understood what Abrams and company were trying to achieve with Cloverfield and they made it work for me.  But choices in style of filming and direction are beginning to get predictable.  By the time Shyamalan released The Village speculation and stolen production material had been leaked to the general public and soon everyone, including me, went into that film looking for a twist or a surprise ending instead of enjoying the film.  Unfortunately, geeks like me sometimes forget to take off the "analysis hat" and just enjoy a film.  I can't say that I had a problem with that during Independence Day, another Manhattan goes kablooey movie, but then again, I don't think ID4 is being taught in film analysis classes at USC or UCLA.  With Cloverfield the big mystery is the who, what, where, and why of the monster and I knew from the first cut, or "flashback" if you will, to the original Coney Island footage that this was a thematic device for displaying the mechanics of digital cameras as well as setting up the last scene depicting splashdown. Similarly, LOST has kept the origin of island's monster a mystery for four years only giving viewers an insight to what it looks like at the end of the first season.  With that in mind, I figured the mystery of Cloverfield's monster would be revealed in a like manner. 

One of the biggest complaints with Cloverfield among viewers has been the shaky cam filming.  I've never been one to complain about a movie experience causing me nausea.  Like I said, I challenged a "spin and puke" ride to a duel and Blair Witch didn't make me sick.  However, here I had to take several breaks to get the color back in my face.  Of course, I figured the best way to watch a movie shot in the style of a handheld camera is to watch it from the perspective of a handheld camera as I didn't see it in a theater or on DVD, I watched it online.  I figured it was meant to be watched in this manner as it was a film that serves to further illustrate our newfound obsession with viral video and digital media.  I don't believe that it enhanced or detracted from my viewing experience so I will assume that what I saw was the same film that everyone saw.   Another nauseating element was Hud's constant wisecracks.  I expect them in a film like ID4 or Ghostbusters but it was a bit jarring for him to be that ridiculous in some spots.  It seemed as if he was trying to force a Ryan Reynolds delivery in most of his jokes.  I expected more from Goddard who has written some of the smartest dialogue, full of sardonic wit, in his tenure with Mutant Enemy. 

I will say that I fully expect a sequel and probably welcome it, given early reports of story ideas.  If the creators are smart, they had additional footage of the cast going through the streets of New York City filmed with another digital camera being wielded by another amateur photographer and they can tell the same story events through the viewfinder of other New Yorkers awe struck by the attack.  Perhaps, now that we know what the creature looks like, we can get a nice shot of him doing his Honey Ryder impression coming out of the water off the coast of New York.  Just as long as it doesn't follow The Blair Witch sequel idea and totally depart from the original style.   That movie required more than just a couple of Dramamine.  I was reaching for the Pepto-Bismol by the end.  You know, if it wouldn’t be totally against the FDA to do so, Bad Robot could have struck a deal and had the DVD packaged with a small sample pack of motion sickness pills.  It would have been a clever nod to the audience as they like to do with some of their productions.  No!  Dumb idea, you say.  Fine, then where were you in 1990 when I spinning in circles waiting for my cheese fries to make an appearance?  I could have used your advice then.