DVD Corner: Cloverfield Greg Kaczynski

J.J. Abrams’ monster movie hit Cloverfield (Paramount Home Entertainment, MSRP: $29.99) storms DVD shelves this week with a big destructive thud. The story of a group of twentysomethings running for their lives from a mysterious giant beast that has risen from the ocean to terrorize New York--all captured on hand-held camera--survives the movie-to-DVD transfer with unabandoned, explosive glee.

Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) is getting ready to leave for Japan, but before he goes, all of his best buddies throw him a surprise party. In attendance are his best friend Hud (the delightfully funny T.J. Miller), his brother Jason (Mike Vogel), Jason’s girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas), weird quiet girl Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) and Rob’s true love, Beth (Odette Yustman). That small group of people are followed from the initial attack of the titular monster, let’s call it “Clover,” through the chaos that follows, including a mass exodus, involvement from the military and sneaking through the dead subway systems.

What makes this movie really work, however, is the fact that it is told from Hud’s point of view. The entire movie, including the “flashbacks,” which are just old revealing bits of videotape that aren’t recorded over, are all told through one DV tape, filmed from one camera. The spontaneity of the cast and the filming process all combine to make this bit of sleight-of-hand absolutely believable, and when the monster comes crashing through New York, pulling buildings down, harkening back to 9/11, it’s hard not to believe. This is powerful, maverick filmmaking.

The digital effects, used sparingly, work perfectly. Being all from Hud’s point of view, there’s a lot of “shaky-cam,” the cataclysmic events being whipped back and forth, in and out of view; there might be a brief glimpse of Clover in between buildings as it tromps off to another street, military fire behind, before it’s gone again. This peek-a-boo style works like a charm; however, if you’re easily made queasy by hand-held movies like this, you might want to watch with a bathroom nearby.

The video transfer is fine. It’s crisp as it could ever be, considering that it came from digital video and it’s gone straight back; Cloverfield is exactly how it looked in the theater. The sound is mighty as well: the bassy explosions and howls from Clover resonate out of any quality sound system and might terrify your neighbors. However, the use of the back channels is surprisingly sparse in many scenes that seem like they would have benefited hugely from high-fidelity surround sound features.

The DVD itself holds a lot of stuff, not all of it great. First of all, it’s disappointing to see such a high-profile DVD come out without an insert. An insert is simply something nice to fill out the packaging, and it always feels cheap when a brand new DVD arrives without some kind of chapter insert.

That being said, the special features begin with the commentary, which is highly technical. This may sound like a great thing when dealing with such a technical film, but director Matt Reeves is left talking on his own for the full 84 minutes, and it seems that the only area he was particularly privy to was how the film was shot. There’s no discussion on the story, the obvious parallels to 9/11 or any controversy that might have arisen. All viewers get, to the point of boring repetition, is mostly talk about where scenes were shot and how the crew was able to mask edits in many scenes while still making them look like a single shot. While this is initially fascinating, it can hardly withstand the entirety of the movie. There are one or two vaguely interesting anecdotes, but ultimately, the commentary is a big yawn.

The rest of the special features are hit and miss, leaning more towards miss. There is about 68 minutes of footage, the bulk of which resides on two featurettes: “The Making of Cloverfield” (28:12) and “Cloverfield Visual Effects” (22:29).

“The Making of Cloverfield” goes over a lot of the same stuff that Reeves talks about during the commentary. It’s a day-by-day documentary showing the locations and discussing the style and how the crew was able to capture that amateur hand-held feel. There is some interesting behind-the-scenes footage of some special effects work, and watching the actors fool around, especially Lizzy Caplan and T.J. Miller, is always entertaining.

“Cloverfield Special Effects” is more of the same, but as could be guessed, focuses on the effects. The featurette does spend the time to break down the major effects sequences in the film and show how they were done. It shows a variety of wire tricks, green screen and blue screen. The wire frame animation sequences, preparing to paste Clover into the scenes, are also really terrific. The featurette does tend to drag on, though, unless this area specifically interests the viewer.

The other special features are short and occasionally sweet. “I saw it! It’s Alive! It’s huge!” (5:57) retells (for the third time on the disc) the story of how Abrams went to Tokyo and was mesmerized by all of the Godzilla paraphernalia there and thus, Cloverfield was born, and then goes through the design of Clover itself. The designer talks at length about different choices for the monster, and (finally) some bit of insight is revealed about the beast (its age).

“Clover Fun” (3:57) is a stack of funny outtakes, the ones with Hud messing around being the most entertaining.

Finally, there are four deleted scenes (3:34) and two alternative endings (4:32), both with commentary, but neither all that compelling.

The bottom line is that if you enjoyed Cloverfield in theaters, go out and buy it. It’s just as great on the small screen, and with the extras already on the disc, even though they’re not mind-blowing, the risk of a studio “double-dip” seems minimal. It’s just too bad Paramount didn’t take the time to delve deeper into Cloverfield’s story and its origins.

Cloverfield is now available on DVD.