The thing is, it's not really a 9/11 allegory. For it to qualify as even a half-assed allegory you'd need to be able to say something like "Cloverfield represents Al Qeada, and the spider-crabs that fall from it represent the paranoia that it injected into our culture through the 9/11 attacks, little fears that run scampering through the darkened subway tunnels of our body-politic, the trains of trust having been so cruelly de-railed." Since you can't say that it's not an allegory. Too bad really…
It does invoke images we associate with 9/11 in order to seem topical, but it doesn't properly follow through on that either. Which is part of why it sucks. For instance: We now actually have a very good idea of the kind of varied reactions people give when a previously unimaginable disaster strikes New York. Cloverfield doesn't even bother to try and ring true with that; it just throws the extras cast up and down the streets like a typical Godzilla movie. Which, since the movie is trying to take itself waaay more seriously then a Godzilla movie would, is a problem.
It does invoke images we associate with 9/11 in order to seem topical, but it doesn't properly follow through on that either. Which is part of why it sucks. For instance: We now actually have a very good idea of the kind of varied reactions people give when a previously unimaginable disaster strikes New York. Cloverfield doesn't even bother to try and ring true with that; it just throws the extras cast up and down the streets like a typical Godzilla movie. Which, since the movie is trying to take itself waaay more seriously then a Godzilla movie would, is a problem.
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