I saw the Blockbuster film Cloverfield this weekend. Think Blair Witch Project meets Independence Day. A monster interrupts a going away party thrown for character Rob by his friends (attractive folks in their twenties), and we follow them throughout the night as his friend Hud continues to record. Rob never told his friend Beth he loved her, and he leads his friends to attempt to rescue her from her apartment.
As far as science fiction monster movies go, I was thoroughly in suspense. The fake documentary approach made the film especially suspenseful and scary in scenes that would have felt been there, done that in a traditional Hollywood presentation. The characters didn’t know what was going on, so neither did I. I had a lot of fun hiding my eyes in the theater with my friends.
As delightfully scary as Cloverfield was, however, the film was not so hot in its race and gender presentation. Leadership fell onto the men and Lily and Marlena were largely excluded from decisions that affected the lives of the entire group.
There also was a scene in which Rob, a white character, heroically breaks into an electronics store to change the battery in his cellphone to hear a voicemail from the trapped Beth. The majority of the looters in the film were black. One might argue that showing images of predominately black folks looting is “just a movie”, but in real life, say Hurricane Katrina, race can make the difference between commandeering supplies for survival and getting shot for looting.
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Although the bit with Marlene beating the snot out of a parasite with an iron bar (while Hud blathered about with the camera) was remarkably cool ^^
Yes it was! And when she said, “Wait, you know who Garfield is?” when Hud said was all “OMG you’re a girl and you know who Superman is?”