Things that go bump in the night

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Warning: this article contains plot spoilers

It started as a mystery and it ends as a mystery. Along the way there are many questions, few answers, but lots of fear. The first we knew of what became known as the ‘Cloverfield project’ was a trailer shown before one of 2007’s summer blockbusters, Transformers. It was a film without a name, and, unusually, the trailer gave away little of the plot beyond the fact that something terrible was destroying Manhattan. A viral marketing campaign helped to intensify the speculation and anticipation, while a later trailer confirmed the name as Cloverfield and gave a shred or two of extra information. In particular, the second trailer showed us the chilling title card that replaces any conventional title sequence in the film. It purports to identify the footage as ‘multiple sightings of case designate “Cloverfield”, recorded by a camera retrieved from ‘incident site U.S. 447’ – the ‘area formerly known as Central Park’.

The film appears to be taken on a hand-held camcorder, principally by Hudson, whose friend Rob Hawkins is about to depart for a new job in Japan. Hud is documenting the surprise leaving party that Rob’s friends are throwing for him, which constitutes the first part of the film. There are also some short sections showing Rob and a girl, Beth, with whom he appears very close. From the snippets of Rob and Beth enjoying a day together at Coney Island, it is evident that Hud is filming over the top of a previous recording. As the party proceeds, we discover that Rob has not spoken to Beth for some time, but he is nevertheless upset when she brings a date to the party. Beth departs, leaving a tense atmosphere, but the relationship difficulties are soon overshadowed by a building-shaking tremor, accompanied by an extraordinary noise and a temporary loss of power. It becomes clear that something calamitous is going on, and they flee the building just as the head of the Statue of Liberty comes crashing into the street. The natural response is to escape Manhattan, but Rob is determined to find Beth, and he sets off for her apartment block. In the ensuing panic, Hud manages to keep the camcorder switched on, recording the terrifying events even when in very grave and imminent danger.

Everything seems set for a conventional, if cleverly constructed, monster horror movie. The use of hand-held cameras is now well-established in conveying a sense of immediacy and chaos, but the first-person aspect to this – Hud recording everything on Rob’s camcorder – is a nice twist (as in The Blair Witch Project), reinforcing the feeling of panic and danger. An additional layer to the story is intriguingly supplied by the segments of previously recorded material which Hud doesn’t tape over. Not only does this material give us a little back story to Rob and Beth’s relationship, but it also serves as a poignant counterpoint to their apparently imminent doom. And, if you watch carefully enough right at the end, it provides an answer to how this monster suddenly appeared from nowhere.

However, this monster story is unlike most of its breed. In general, these tales end up with a happy ending. In the first part of films like this, we see the normal, relatively undisturbed life of the hero and his (much more often than ‘her’) friends; we see something of what the hero wants to achieve, which often includes starting or rescuing a romantic relationship. Then we see how the arrival of the monster derails these plans and endangers people who are dear to the hero. Finally, after difficulties and dangers, the hero prevails, destroys, banishes or redeems the monster, achieves the goal and gets the girl. We leave the film after a brief epilogue has shown us the happy-ever-after state of affairs. But Cloverfield doesn’t give us this typical scenario, and nor does it show us a typical hero. Rob is the hero, to a degree, but the film isn’t just about him – Hud may be hidden behind the camera, but he’s the one through whose eyes we look at the events which are taking place. What makes Rob the hero is his determination to rescue the damsel in distress. But this is a reversal of the direction in which their relationship appeared to be heading at the start of the film. All his other goals have been forgotten in the crisis that envelopes the group of friends: simply survive and get to Beth.

Yet Rob is clearly not the conventional hero of a monster story in that he is not in any way involved in the struggle against the monster; rather this conflict forms the terrifying backdrop to his particular quest. Worse, the monster is not overcome along the way, nor does our hero succeed in his goal of surviving. He may rescue the maiden from the tower where she is trapped, but to what end? Nothing more than the reassertion of their love for each other. This is, to be sure, extremely important, but it is the only positive outcome which the film explicitly gives us.

All of which raises two questions: Why do we like to entertain ourselves with scary monster stories? And why doesn’t this film give us the heroic resolution which surely makes the frights worthwhile?

The answer to the first lies in our need to be reassured about the state of the world around us. Monsters give expression to deep fears and worries which we may otherwise not be prepared to articulate. Nick Capasso writes:

Monsters are everywhere, and always have been. These terrible and wonderful beings, since the dawn of human consciousness, have lurked at the edges and stood front and centre in all our far-flung cultures. Their ubiquity and longevity are based on their power and adaptability as symbols and metaphors for a great number of things, all centred upon anxiety. . . . Our primal fears have not gone away, and the monster remains the most effective tool for visualizing and confronting them.[1]

Cloverfield’s powerful imagery of the Manhattan skyline being destroyed, with clouds of dust and debris billowing down the street, immediately evokes memories of 9/11. The monster here gives expression to the foreboding that slinks around the back of many minds as people go about their business in the major cities of the world. We must push the anxiety down or it could overwhelm us, but we still know that, at any moment, unspeakable destruction could be unleashed. We don’t know where it would come from, what form it would take, how we would respond, what the consequences would be. Films that explicitly deal with the subject or terrorism look this great horror too directly in the face for many people, not to mention often being rather political. Cloverfield lets us feel the fear, and play with it a little, without being so overt. We don’t need to make the connection explicit in our minds for the experience to be somewhat cathartic.

As for why this film doesn’t give us the heroic resolution we might hope for, this monster is again reflecting our current nervousness. The news media remind us frequently that the ‘war on terror’ is achieving little or nothing, and the Cloverfield monster reminds us that pitting conventional forces against such a formidable opponent is largely ineffectual. Cloverfield is not a film that instils warm, confident feelings about the abilities of the authorities to resolve terrifying crises; rather it’s a film that leaves the niggling question of, what if the worst does happen? The world of the early twenty-first century is characterised more by alarm and anxiety than by hope and optimism, and Cloverfield is very much a product of its time.

And yet the film-makers do not – cannot – leave us entirely without hope. First, there is the reminder that when things become extreme, people can see more clearly where their priorities lie. Rob abandons his preoccupation with himself and realises not only that he loves Beth, but that he must do everything in his power to rescue her – or at least to be with her when the end comes. This is not a trivial matter of romantic subplots, but an indicator of how elemental love is; a declaration that there are more important things than saving one’s skin. Neither is it confined to romantic relationships: Rob’s friends go with him for friendship’s sake. When disaster strikes, the people who truly care for us will do everything in their power to help us. It seems to me, as a Christian, that this deep urge to help others in distress – even when they are not close to us – is too strong to be explained simply in evolutionary terms, but makes complete sense if, as the Bible claims, we are made in God’s image.

Cloverfield finishes with a note of optimism in a second way, however: the camera is evidently discovered by the US military at some point after the end of the action we see. The area in which it was found may no longer be recognisably Central Park, but life has continued. Has the monster been destroyed? It is not certain, but it seems likely. It may not be a ringing note of confidence in our ability to deal with foes, but it does still give some reassurance. And that’s why, as we’ve seen, we frighten ourselves as part of our entertainment. The defeat of the monster has always been a reminder that good will ultimately triumph. For the theistic religions of the world, that conviction springs out of the confidence that God himself is greater than any enemy, and will finally defeat all evil and darkness.

J.R.R. Tolkien shared this Christian conviction and argued powerfully for the importance of fairy stories (which, in essence, is what Cloverfield is) in his essay ‘On Fairy-Stories’. He defends their importance because of the escapist pleasure which they offer and because they help us to explore, question and recover our unquestioned assumptions about the world by viewing it from a perspective very different from a familiar, everyday one. He also defends them because of their ability to reassure and encourage us about the triumph of good. For him, a good fairy story was marked by what he referred to as joy:

In such stories, when the sudden turn comes, we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart's desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.

These gleams were reminders to him of a greater story – the historical account of God’s Son becoming incarnated as a man, living, dying and rising again in order to rescue lost humanity. For him, all fairy stories were reflections of this deep truth about the cosmos, because the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the proof that God will triumph – and has already done so. Death and evil are not the ultimate truth; their end will come. Cloverfield hardly has brilliant gleams which point to such realities, but even here, the glimmer shows through the darkness.

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