‘Cloverfield’ Does Civilian Horror Better Than Any Other Giant Monster Movie

Cloverfield is famously disorienting, to the point where its shaky camera, found-footage style made many moviegoers physically ill when they saw it in theaters. Motion sickness will probably be less of an issue on a smaller screen, since Cloverfield is now available to stream on Netflix, but the film’s characters are still all discombobulated, because they have no idea what is going on with the giant monster that’s attacking New York City. They’re in the dark, and it’s this disoriented perspective that lets Cloverfield do something better than any other giant monster movie — capture a horrifying civilian experience.

As a rule, giant monster movies are about the rampaging kaiju more than they’re about any human characters. The camera follows the monster as they topple buildings, swat down airplanes, or breathe radioactive fire upon fleeing masses. Films like the original Godzilla have shown, grippingly, what happens to the hapless civilians caught in the kaiju’s path, but these are typically cutaways, not major characters. When viewers aren’t following a kaiju on its path of destruction, however, we’re usually checking in on a cast of human characters who have something to do with the monster. Maybe they’re the brave military men trying against all odds to defeat an impossible foe, or perhaps they’re the scientists who are attempting to stop a creature they unwittingly unleashed. Heck, sometimes they’re a 10-year-old kid who is inexplicably best friends with the monster (Gamera movies are a trip).

In most cases, though, the human plots of these movies are directly related to the monster plots. It makes narrative sense — the viewer can learn about where this monster came from by watching scientists talk about mutant dinosaurs, or learn about the plan to defeat it by sitting in on a military planning meeting. The human characters need to understand the monster to some extent, for viewers’ benefit as much as their own.

Cloverfield throws all that out of the window, then topples the whole skyscraper down on it for good measure. The characters — all twentysomething New Yorkers — don’t have any connection to the monster, other than that they’re unfortunate enough to live in the same city the beast is currently destroying. Rob isn’t the hero who figures out how to defeat the monster, Marlena doesn’t know its origins, and Hud doesn’t solve any mysteries. They’re just people, reacting to an unprecedented disaster with a terrifyingly realistic lack of information.

The found footage aesthetic helps keep the sense of civilian horror grounded. There are no cuts to a military headquarters, and we never leave Hud’s perspective to go check in on what the monster is doing to the Lower East Side while the gang is walking through subway tunnels. With the exception of the “flashbacks” to Rob and Beth’s earlier Coney Island visit, which serve to develop their relationship rather than explain anything about the monster (who is known as “Clover,” but is never named in the movie itself), viewers are forced to see only what’s happening in the moment with no outside help.

Giant monster movies, by their inherent scale, are hard to empathize with — to the point where it’s not uncommon for the most likable character to be a kaiju. It’s easier to put yourself in a rubber suit and wreck some model buildings than it is to put yourself in the shoes of a normal character. In order to show off the full scope of what a giant kaiju is capable of, the camera needs to pull out, and while that provides context, it robs viewers of the chance to imagine, well, what it would actually be like if a giant monster destroyed your city while you were just trying to go to a friend’s going away party?

There’s lots of explanatory lore for Cloverfield if you look to comic tie-ins or obscure promotional websites, and the Cloverfield Paradox sneakily (if awkwardly) connects with the original Cloverfield to reveal the monsters origins, more or less. But, none of that matters in the original film. We’re not watching a movie about a monster’s thrilling attack on a city, we’re watching terrified friends try to escape an unnatural disaster. Amidst such widespread destruction, the story is actually quite small-scale and intimate, which raises the emotional stakes.

Cloverfield brings giant monster movies back down to Earth, and it’s so successful at doing so that the effect can, with a little effort, carry over to other kaiju films. If you catch the recently released Godzilla: King of the Monsters after streaming Cloverfield, remember what it was like to follow Rob, Hud, and the rest of Clover’s victims as they fled for their lives, unable to comprehend what was happening. The civilians we briefly see fleeing from Godzilla’s stomping feet or Rodan’s apocalyptic winds are just like them, only we’re not watching through their camera lenses.

James Grebey is a pop culture journalist who writes for Syfy Wire, GQ, Billboard, Rotten Tomatoes, The Columbia Journalism Review, and more. Find more of his work at those places, or check out his dump photoshop jokes on Twitter.

Where to stream Cloverfield