jason-1649

Honestly going into Cloverfield I had my doubts. There was no big named stars, shaky independent/Blair Witchish..ish..ish... camera work (along with a similar feeling ad campaign), and a lovely unrealistic concept. Thankfully, much like it did to Manhatten, Cloverfield crushed my doubts, then bombed the crap out of them, ate a few of my doubts friends, and in an unrelated twist made my doubts dress up as a clown and give up its self dignity to try and sell used cars. Cloverfield was indeed a wonderful movie. So lets go into how destroyed such doubts.

First is the big named stars. OK I know big stars don't make a movie great, as a matter of fact they can make some movies seem worse because you feel they just cast them to have them and the part does not fit ("Minority thug from Harlem who's killed so many he's become emotionally cold? I'm thinking Rowan Atkinson.")This isn't the case here. I would not know any of these stars if I saw them on the street, outside of the fact a couple look like people I've seen drunk at college parties. This was actually a boost for this movie, as the actors did great and the fact I couldn't identify them in a line up of celebrities, or for that matter the people that live down the road, lead to making the concept more real in the idea your watching someones home video of the event at hand, that really added to this movie. I mean that too, if one of them robbed me at gun point and I had to pick them out of a lineup I would probably get it wrong, sorry again Frank you just looked seedy... Anyway.

Camera work/ Blair Witch ad campaign thingy. I have to say shaky camera work is one of my biggest qualms about independent film (it's called a tripod people, I know you don't have a big budget but my grandmother even has a tripod, GET ONE!). This was no exception to the shaky thing, but in the context of the movie setting, anything else would have been suspect, and still even with the all over camcorder work, it isn't nauseatingly shaky like so many Indy films which were shot by some cameraman I can only suspect suffers from Parkinson's (TRIPOD!! Seriously look it up), and it added to the sense of really being there. I also thought there would be no good shots of the monster because of this, but there were, unbelievably so. As for the Ad campaign, it was actually quite genius, and I have to qualms with it, I was just saying so was the Blair Witch ad campaign and I could have eaten a roll of film and produced a better movie in my bathroom about 24 hours later than that thing. It just scared me to think I may have to suffer through that again ya know.

Finally concept. Yes it is a giant monster attacking a city movie, but before you start conjuring images of a guy in a foam rubber outfit stomping Tokyo (which there is some subtle hints to that in the early movie, not the foam rubber part just the whole Godzilla thing), or worse yet start thinking of the remake of it which gave me an aneurysm, this movie is a far cry from those. This feels entirely different, and not in that walking through a yard barefoot and stepping in something that isn't dirt way, no it's in a good way. Plus with the reported budget this movie had, they must have called in some favors or black mailed someone to get this thing, it was quite spectacular.

Don't take my word for it though and I know you won't, lord knows I tried to warn you of Epic Movie but you went anyway, see it for yourself.

What is it about movies based on the Works of Steven King? There's always two types made: The first is the classic to phenomenal such as Carrie, Cujo, The Shawshank Redemption, and the Green Mile (and don't write me about the different pen names used for the last two, it's still King no matter what he wrote it under). The second, and unfortunately most common, are the movies that come out hum-drum, hackneyed, and even just plain dull and lame, I'll give you a hint as to which category 1408 belongs to, it's the category closer to this sentence. Don't get me wrong King is a great writer by all means, but for some reason eight out of nine times movies based on his work fall like a midget off a bar stool, short and with a nauseating thud. Let's now take a short time to discuss the reasons for this using 1408 as an example.

Cast: John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson take the lead credits in this movie. Both of which in their own rights are good actors, Cusack is a fine actor and Jackson is the single greatest angry black man in Hollywood. I don't mean that in any racist sense so don't take it that way, it's just I can't give him title of best angry man period in Hollywood as long as R. Lee Ermey is still alive, GOT THAT MAGGOT!? Where was I…? Oh yes, Jackson's role in this was far from angry and loud taking away some of his best qualities, more so his actual role in 1408 was about as significant as whole bread, cause until it was sliced, no one seemed to care. As for Cusack, this movie seemed to be more of a one man show starring him trying to play a person slipping into insanity and coming out like someone slipping into an undersized Easter bunny suit on Christmas, mildly amusing but rather missing the point. The best part of this movie was when the both Cusack and Jackson were on the scene at the same time, this was amusing and fun to watch as they both played well off of each other in a battle of the greater smart ass competition, but this was in fact very short in this movie.

Plot: Have you seen the previews? If so you've seen the plot. Outside of what was in the previews 1408 has about as many twists and turns as a north Texas highway, and if you've never driven a north Texas highway this equates to exactly zero, and if you have, I am sorry for your ordeal. Outside of that, there's not much else to say about plot.

Horror: This movie is touted as a horror movie, and in doing so manages to be about as scary as children dressed as Raggedy Ann and Andy on Halloween… Scratch that actually, children dressed as Raggedy Ann and Andy terrify the hell out of me now that I think about it. It's like animated clown puppets out to steal your sweets and egg your house. On second thought let's compare it more to a Chihuahua in a sombrero, mildly amusing and while it may have teeth, come on it's a Chihuahua worst case scenario you'll end up with wounds less severe than if you cut yourself shaving.

Special Effects: I think there were supposed to be some in this movie, I'm not sure... I think the third string special effects unit on a Troma movie could have done a better job. Let me rephrase that, the effects weren't horrid, they just weren't there, and aside from a couple of educational film quality ghosts there wasn't anything in the movie that couldn't be reproduced by a bored kid and a camcorder.

Final Notes: While I did come down hard on this movie, as it is more fun to do, it was not the worst movie I've ever seen either, it was just a far, far, far cry from the best. For that reason I decided to get creative with rating it. 1: Definitely better than a one. 4: Slightly below average but so was the movie. 0: Not even a valid option. 8: Not even close.

Therefore, I give this movie a semisolid, somewhat gelatinous 4. I will note that despite all I have said, if you like this movie, don't take this as an attack, we all like different things, it just lacked something overall for my taste. For me, despite a decent cast and a decent original story writer, this movie was about as far off par as Tiger Woods if he were blind and on crack.