Cloverfield

The Promroiship took a break this weekend to make way for the FA Cup, leaving me with an opportunity to go to the cinema to see Cloverfield, the new film produced by JJ Abrams of Lost/ Alias fame.

The best way to describe the film is Godzilla meets Blair Witch Project starring the Alien's big brother; the events surrounding a monster terrorising Manhatten happens to be captured on film by a group of young people armed with a video camera. As they try to escape the monster and save their friends, they happen to get some astonishing close-ups of the entity and the army's attempts to subdue it.

The film taps into the post 9/11 / 7/7 collective consciousness by exploring what it would be like to be caught up in a city under attack (albeit by a monster rather than Islamist terrorists). As one building collapses, our heroes take shelter in a shop to avoid the dust cloud which consumes the streets, and later on they find themselves walking down subway tunnels in the dark in an attempt to reach safety. I was unsure whether this film was a direct consequence of the aforementioned attacks, and whether it is as yet OK to use these circumstances in an attempt to create a box office hit.

Morality aside however, the fact this film was excellent was marked by the silence of the audience as the final scenes ended and the credits started to roll. I got the sense that the audience would have liked the film to continue a bit longer, being rather short at just under one hour thirty minutes. Or maybe they were just terrified of what would happen on the way home as they entered central Birmingham...