Free Speech Zone #3: Free Cloverfield

My favorite scene in Cloverfield is the one where the guy with the video camera wanders into a Cineplex where Cloverfield is playing and makes an illegal copy of the film which he posts to the internet so people can see a shaky video version of a shaky video version of a monster movie that deconstructs monster movies to such an extent it virtually contains not one single cliché of the genre, a film made by elimination, that refuses to show you what you want to see because the guy with the camera is much more interested in the girl than the monster, so it's in fact a doomed love story with a monster in the background. Critics are lambasting the film for using imagery right out of 9/11, buildings falling down in New York City, without actually making any sort of comment on the event itself, but they don't seem to get the concept of deconstruction. It's exactly like 9/11. The terrorist is a monster that is never explained, the official story is certainly a sham, we'll never know what really happened because all we've got are video remnants picked up by future archeologists who have to piece together the event through the eyes of observers with something else on their mind. And it will certainly be used as an excuse to start a "war on monsters" in Cloverfield II. Like your standard terrorist cell, you never see the whole monster, just bits and pieces, but artists are posting their versions of what they think it looks like here. Hasbro's coming out with a $100 toy of the monster but it's not bin Laden, it's a hideous multi-limbed beast with a lot of teeth, more like al Qaeda, perfect for placing under the Christmas tree so your kids can play with it, pretending to be terrorists themselves, knocking down New York with sound effects in their heads, every viewer a new al Qaeda cell, ready to inflict meaningless damage on whatever's nearby in the name of amusement. Yeah, it's food for thought because, not despite, what's left out of the film. See it but don't pay for it. Use this torrent. That's what a real terrorist would do.

If you're new to this, you'll need a bittorrent program and a player.