If you don’t understand what this title has to do with Cloverfield, shame on you. J.J. Abrams spent ridiculous amounts of time on viral marketing campaigns and ridiculously convoluted back stories that never make it into the movie; the least you could do is google “Slusho”.
I kid…sort of. The whole viral thing is still kind of weird to me. Generally it provides me about 5 minutes of moderate interest (“huh…interesting”) before I just find an article written about the viral marketing scheme, skim it, and never look at any of it again. But I am definitely digressing here. I had the pleasure the other night of rewatching Cloverfield. Yes, I certainly was one of those who flocked the theatre for an opening weekend(ish…I can’t remember if I hit opening weekend exactly…) viewing. I enjoyed it very much, didn’t get motion sick, and wrote the movie off as a “no rewatch value” type flick. I mean, intellectual, it is not. It’s about the creative use of the camera as a character, first person type shooting, and shock value scares – what could be good about a second viewing?
Answer, TONS apparently. Rewatching Cloverfield was actually incredibly enjoyable. For one thing, it is a movie where the size of the screen definitely makes a difference. If you’re one of those people who gets horribly motion sick from films like this, it might help in this case to do a small screen viewing. The motion was much less bothersome I think mainly because my eye was able to actually take in what was going on rather than just knowing something dark, scary, and blurry had just walked across the right hand corner of the screen.
There was a plus and a minus to this. On the plus side, I definitely felt like I saw more of what was going on, which was sort of interesting. I caught things I didn’t the first time, such as the couple frame splice of a still from King Kong when the helicopter is batted down over Central Park. Or, more mundanely, just being able to pay more attention to the bridge collapse, the effects of the bites from the little spidery dudes, etc. – things that, the first time, I was too caught up with what was going on to really take note of. Surprisingly to me, those elements held up really well under scrutiny. No, it’s not a masterpiece of intellectualism, but it’s a well crafted monster tale that stands some inspection.
On the negative side of things, I definitely saw more of what was going on. If you don’t know already, I don’t like any horror movie that shows the monster too soon. What you don’t see is always scarier than what you see. Frankly, the only true exception to this, in my opinion, is Alien. The fucker is scary as shit even when you do finally get a full body view. But unless you’ve created the awesomeness of monsterhood that was Alien, don’t show your monster too soon.

Did the little things on the side of his head remind anyone else of those stress toys where the eyeballs pop out when you squeeze?
Now, in Cloverfield, in my first viewing, the only time I felt like you really got a good look at the monster was at the very end. And it killed me. The monster SUCKED. The lungs coming out of the ears? What was up with that? Seriously. After a long debate, I conceded to my boyfriend that I could have maybe tolerated if it was a) super blurry or b) reallllly fast, but even then I’d be shaky on that. As it is, with the slow pan up the monster, focus on the face (NOT SCARY), and then pause – majorly crappy and semi-ruining of the whole movie. However, I somewhat forgave it because the monster was shown so few times before that.
MAN was I wrong. The monster, almost in its entirety, is shown pretty clearly several times in the movie. I don’t know if I just was out of it during my first viewing not to notice, but I think it was the whole big screen mind fuck effect that got me. With my eyes more able to focus and process on my rinky TV, I caught a lot more views of “Clover”. On the one hand, it’s pretty clever that it was shot/animated so that on a large screen, the monster looks a lot more obscured than it actually is – that we aren’t as able to take it all in as easily. On the other, it made me sort of want to tear my hair out. I’m sorry, but “Clover” is not scary. At all. Like…at all at all. Seeing more of him earlier on really didn’t inspire more fear in me. It actually detracted. Which did make me sort of sad I’d rewatched. I had originally walked out going “wow, they showed so little of the monster except for that travesty of a reveal at the end”; this time I walked away going “WHY DID THEY SHOW HIM SO MUCH???”
Overall, though, I am glad I rewatched. It was as much fun to watch the second time as the first. Scary or startling at all? No, the scares don’t hold up. But really entertaining and interesting? Definitely. If you liked the film the first time, I’d really recommend doing a second/home screen viewing. It’s worth seeing the differences…and spending the 5 minutes we did to find that stupid King Kong shot with the crappy DVD functions available on a PS2.



1) Dollhouse
The shining moments of the season came in the last episodes with the Alpha storyline. Alan Tudyk was, as usual, awesome, but here’s where a glimpse at the darkness of the dollhouse started to come out – effects that the mind control can have on people, using wiping minds as a weapon, plain ol’ psychopathic insanity. Yes, it was all TV dumbed down to an extent, but it was still pretty awesome and creepy.
From the creepy little girl who’s actually a doll, to the haunted house appearance of the dollhouse, and then especially to the flashbacks of horrible things happening to the characters we know and love (or love to hate), a future where everyone is a doll and can be wiped at any time is truly horrifying. Joss didn’t let up on the horror either; it’s dark, it’s cold, it’s brutal…AND IT’S AWESOME. Season 2 really looked as if it were going to follow the same path. To an extent, it had to; we know the future of the dollhouse is bleak as hell, so there needs to be some indication of that happening now. Sure, we got some episodes that had Dushku featured and fell flat and sure we got some that seemed a little to pandering, but we also got some like “Belonging” in which Priya/Sierra ends up actually killing someone and forced back into the dollhouse to save herself. While Dollhouse isn’t traditional horror, the disturbing ideas that it has are more horrific than many a modern “horror” film I’ve seen (seriously…Saw movies are NOT scary…they’re just gross and uncomfortable).
















































