brush up on your lovecraft...
i really don't know what i thought about this movie...i can't say that i didn't like it and wanted my money back, and i have certainly seen movies far worse then this one...i think there was a compromise drawn at some point and you can't win both ways...
for starters, i was pleasently surpraised by the monster...usually you see it at the end and you are like "thats it? you were running from that?"...
in this particular incarnation of the ever repeated drama of new york being destroyed by something really bad (which is why i am moving to boston) you see the monster pretty fast...i mean you catch glimpses of it and then you actually see it...and you see it a lot...and while i tend to take lovecraft's viewpoint that you should never show/describe what it is that you are supposed to fear (re: lovecraft's consistent style of never actually describing anything, instead refering to it as "nameless", "amorphous", "eldritch", "unnameable", "unspeakable" and so on ad nausuam...)i have to admit that the monster was pretty creepy looking without looking stupid...they made it as inhuman as possible...the joints were turned the wrong way, it didn't move like a human being, and it was quite arachnidal, which, according to joseph campbell, is something that is primoridally feared by human beings...the phallic mother, that whole thing that the very classic version of the witch falls into...think about it, you will get it...basically, there was nothing fancy, they just made something really messed up and put it up on screen and showed it from different angles...from that standpoint, the movie worked...
ok...so, here is where the compromise comes in...the film makers wanted to pull a blair witch-esque movie here...they didn't claim it to be real because most of us would know if manhatten was destroyed by a monster that we shall call shub-niggarath (why shub-niggarath? cause shub-niggarath is the black goat of a thousand young, and that thing had crazy spider things falling off of it left and right)...so, how do you make it seem like it is real? just the way they did it...cuts in time, random clips of whatever was being taped over, cinematography that would make a sailor queasy, actors that people don't recognize so they "its a movie" function doesn't kick in...but when you shot a movie in that respect, you sacrifice some things...
1. people go to movies expecting semi-descent cinematography...while the effects were outstanding, the camera looked like it was being run by an idiot who was running around...which was exactly the point...except that i paid $9.50 to get into the damned movie in the first place...
2. there is no space for any character development...in the midst of shub-niggarath destroying all you know and love, understandable, you would not be speaking into the camera telling the camera who you are, why you are who you are and how you got to be who it is that you are...there is no room for convienent flash-backs that give the audience a quick look into the character's backstory so that their motives and feelings are more clear...it is a tape from a video recorder...where would that go? how would it fit in? however, the audience feels cheated because they are used to going to a movie and getting that...and lets face it, we know it is a movie...i am drinking an icee, sitting in a chair, $9.50 poorer and i know that new york city is still there...i know these are characters, and this is a movie made up by some one and screen played and made with millions of dollars put forth from lucas films...so i want a damn backstory....
3. the characters are hard to care about...you don't have the convient flash backs that say "oh, she is a bitch because she used to get yelled at by her mom for leaving her barbies in the living room"...this isn't a study of the human being...it is a horror movie...and as hard as one might try, horror movies end up with stock characters, just like a commedia or a mystery play...so by the end, the filmmakers are trying to tell me that even though the two main characters have devolved into the stereotypical horror movie lovers (we never knew how much we loved each other until X came and Xed X and now we have to fend for our lives and our love) they are still the real people they were presented to be at the beginning of the film...you can't have both...real people aren't stock characters and stock characters need to have a back story, no matter how cliche it is, for them to be worked with...they all may have the same back story, but at least we know where they are coming from...so there is this devolution in the characters that again, makes one feel cheated...
you are basically supposed to believe that you are watching government footage of what happened to new york city...and the concept is creepy...especcially the beginning, when you just hear the rummbling and everyone starts panicing...it is possible that the monster what shown too early, that is was too visual, but then again, that leads to the fourth point...
4. you still don't know what the fuck is happening...the one stock character that was missing was the guy who knows everything...he is either a government conspiracy theoriest with a degree from harvard or a government agent with a degree from yale, or the son of one of the above with a bachelors from brown and masters from princeton...he wasn't there to tell us where the monster came from or why it was here...the monster isn't really destroyed...oh sure, they are bombing the hell out of new york, and obviously people are still alive otherwise the government would never have recovered the tape, but you really have no clue...and in a way, that is scarier...what is it? i don't know...where did it come from? i don't know...how do we get rid of it/survive it? i don't know...what does it want? i don't know...why is it doing this? i don't know...you get the picture...the audience doesn't have the divine omnipotence usually bestowed upon them in the typical movie...the campers may not know that jason is the special boy who "drowned" and is now back to seek revenge for the death of his mother, but we do...and that gives us a form of comfort...even the blair witch gave back story, telling about why there was a witch in the woods and the old legends surrounding it...there are no legends here, no warnings from greying men in gas stations telling us to stay away from whatever it is that holds the evil...we have done nothing to deserve this sort of thing, so it isn't even divine punishment...denied this usual omnipotence, we again feel cheated...we are just as confounded and confused as the characters, and so we don't get the comfort of having the inside knowledge of what room not to go into...again, we feel cheated...
basically, in an attempt at creating something completely new and different, certain things that the audience has come to expect and want have been sacrificed...there is no satisfying conclusion, or plot, or characterization because if you were really watching a video camera, there wouldn't be any...but then if you except the reality of the video camera, the heroine should have been dead after the helicopter crash at least and there would have been no way the camera would have survived all that shit, even if the guy was ridiculous enough to keep holding onto a camera while trying desperatly not to die...quite honestly, most people can confidently look at themselves and say "you know what, i am have to cross over a bridge of air conditioner, i might need two hands for this one" and have let the camera go...and even if the guy had held onto it and it didn't break, there would have been a whole lapses of time missing and the battery would have gone dead hours before anything really major happened...and i'm pretty sure that the time and date stamp dissappeared through most of the climatic parts of the movie...
so the audience is left at an impass...we are able at times to allow a to become b...we accept that what we see on the screen in an alternate...and horror movies, more so then other genres, are ritualistic...no matter how horrifiying, how grotesque, or how "inovative and shocking" they might be they are rituals with the same characters and the same story simply reworked into something differnent by the individual mind of the film maker...and sometimes it has fantasic results and sometimes it has terrible results...but like a rituallistic festival, we know who we are going to see and what is going to happen and when it doesn't, one feels cheated, like you think you are going to a service of some sort and instead of what normally happens, the celebrant turns around and goes "hey guys, today we are going to do something totally differnt"...you are going to feel cheated out of that religious ritual...and i am talking about highly stylized rituals one finds in old religions...i know if i went to church and the priest changed things up i would be like "what the hell? i want my fucking collection money back!"...and in a way, i think this is almost like that...
it isn't a total failure...the idea was good, but the suspension of disbelif they asked the audience to have was far beyond what most people were willing to give...fine, a is b, and maybe even b is c, but i absolutly refuse to give you that a is c...the audience is asked to believe that we are in another dimension of new york, where shub-niggarath has desemated the isle of manhatten and this tape recorder was what was found left...perhaps if there wasn't the devolution into stock characters (because stock characters if an element is missing...the plot was stock, but the development of the story wasn't because we didn't get to know these characters) the movie may have worked...perhaps if people died, the movie might have worked...perhaps if the camera was dropped long before people got eaten and/or blown to hell with h-bombs and air raids, it would be have been ok...but the suspension of disbelief asked for was too much of a compromise...it is either a documentary that has to be as real as the laws of physics and biology that i am right now being governed by, or it has to be the mythic, ritual world of the horror movie where i know who and what to expect and i am given the omnipotence of a diety and we can forgo a little of the scientific reality for the sake of the ritual expression...but it can really only be one or the other...