Monstrous Feelings: The Invasion (2007) and Cloverfield (2008)
How do monsters make you feel? If you answered "scared" or "angry" or "happy"--or any other emotion--you're answering the slightly different question "What do monsters make you feel?" That question each of us has to answer individually on a case-by-case basis: it depends on the monster, it depends on the story, it depends on us.
But how do monsters make you feel? That's a question that doesn't entirely depend; we can answer with a degree of objectivity: monsters make us feel because they are different. Monstrous difference challenges expectations and the regularity of natural laws (e.g., the monstrous birth of the calf with two heads); monstrous difference challenges boundaries (e.g., the werewolf, the vampire).
I raise this question about the conjunction of monsters and feeling because I've recently seen two films that put these two topics together: The Invasion, the remake/revision of The Invasion of the Body Snatcher, starring Nicole Kidman; and Cloverfield, the eye-witness man-on-the-street experience of a NY-flattening Kaiju. Both of these films share something else: the thought that your feelings are the most important thing about you.
This comes out in different ways in the two films. In The Invasion, the role of the monster is clearly to threaten feelings: you go to sleep, you wake up, and you're the same person--the same memories and thoughts--only you don't have feelings. You also don't sweat, which is part of same semiotic constellation: feelings/sweat are messy, feelings/sweat tend to get onto others (in the most basic sense, your feelings come out in your sweat--and it is only in this sense that "Body Snatchers" still fits these monsters, instead of "Feeling Snatchers": because you feel with your body).
That is part of the lure of the monster here, as the movie hits the viewer with a little too hard: maybe if we didn't have feelings, things could be cleaner, simpler, better. The fact that the monster tempts us may explain why all of the special effects are CGIs of "your changing body"--we see the internal changes because, in some ways, the monster is already inside your body, as the temptation for a cleaner way of life. (What an idea: "We've traced the call--it's coming from inside your body!") I would argue that this is one of the reasons why the movie failed: that the movie is a little ambivalent about feelings--sure they make us human, but maybe that's part of the problem. (Another reason this movie failed is more common-sensical: it was a mistake to cast Nicole Kidman as the most feeling human. The unfeeling invaders come and present a difference which isn't all that different from (some of) us.)
In Cloverfield, the relation between monsters and feeling is radically different: monsters don't threaten our feelings--monsters help us to feel. In that way, the Cloverfield monster--look at the word "love"/"lover" right in the title!--is not so different from any other disaster: perfect storms and volcanoes and towering infernos all help characters to understand and express their feelings. Many critics and reviewers have called this a monster movie for the YouTube- and blog-generation; the positive reviews comment on the immediacy of the disaster itself, while the negative reviews focus on the egotism of the people facing the disaster. That seems like a fair critique of blogging (who really wants to read my thoughts on these two movies, right?), but it misses the obvious: just about every disaster film is about people's feelings--just about every disaster is paired with or seen through a narrative about people expressing their love. But that's really why, as a monster movie, Cloverfield doesn't entirely work--the monster could be replaced with any disaster; the same characters could go through the same experiences with a terrorist attack, and still come to the same conclusion: "I love you."
Both positive and negative reviews of Cloverfield capture something true--the movie does capture the immediacy of disaster, and they characters are self-centered--but if we combine these insights, we'll see what seems to be the core problem with this movie: the immediate disaster in Cloverfield isn't the monster destroying NYC, but the disaster of a broken-heart. Heck, that's the same conclusion as Autumn in New York--is this really a monster movie? Cloverfield fails as a monster movie because it doesn't offer us any difference from ourselves.
But how do monsters make you feel? That's a question that doesn't entirely depend; we can answer with a degree of objectivity: monsters make us feel because they are different. Monstrous difference challenges expectations and the regularity of natural laws (e.g., the monstrous birth of the calf with two heads); monstrous difference challenges boundaries (e.g., the werewolf, the vampire).
I raise this question about the conjunction of monsters and feeling because I've recently seen two films that put these two topics together: The Invasion, the remake/revision of The Invasion of the Body Snatcher, starring Nicole Kidman; and Cloverfield, the eye-witness man-on-the-street experience of a NY-flattening Kaiju. Both of these films share something else: the thought that your feelings are the most important thing about you.
This comes out in different ways in the two films. In The Invasion, the role of the monster is clearly to threaten feelings: you go to sleep, you wake up, and you're the same person--the same memories and thoughts--only you don't have feelings. You also don't sweat, which is part of same semiotic constellation: feelings/sweat are messy, feelings/sweat tend to get onto others (in the most basic sense, your feelings come out in your sweat--and it is only in this sense that "Body Snatchers" still fits these monsters, instead of "Feeling Snatchers": because you feel with your body).
That is part of the lure of the monster here, as the movie hits the viewer with a little too hard: maybe if we didn't have feelings, things could be cleaner, simpler, better. The fact that the monster tempts us may explain why all of the special effects are CGIs of "your changing body"--we see the internal changes because, in some ways, the monster is already inside your body, as the temptation for a cleaner way of life. (What an idea: "We've traced the call--it's coming from inside your body!") I would argue that this is one of the reasons why the movie failed: that the movie is a little ambivalent about feelings--sure they make us human, but maybe that's part of the problem. (Another reason this movie failed is more common-sensical: it was a mistake to cast Nicole Kidman as the most feeling human. The unfeeling invaders come and present a difference which isn't all that different from (some of) us.)
In Cloverfield, the relation between monsters and feeling is radically different: monsters don't threaten our feelings--monsters help us to feel. In that way, the Cloverfield monster--look at the word "love"/"lover" right in the title!--is not so different from any other disaster: perfect storms and volcanoes and towering infernos all help characters to understand and express their feelings. Many critics and reviewers have called this a monster movie for the YouTube- and blog-generation; the positive reviews comment on the immediacy of the disaster itself, while the negative reviews focus on the egotism of the people facing the disaster. That seems like a fair critique of blogging (who really wants to read my thoughts on these two movies, right?), but it misses the obvious: just about every disaster film is about people's feelings--just about every disaster is paired with or seen through a narrative about people expressing their love. But that's really why, as a monster movie, Cloverfield doesn't entirely work--the monster could be replaced with any disaster; the same characters could go through the same experiences with a terrorist attack, and still come to the same conclusion: "I love you."
Both positive and negative reviews of Cloverfield capture something true--the movie does capture the immediacy of disaster, and they characters are self-centered--but if we combine these insights, we'll see what seems to be the core problem with this movie: the immediate disaster in Cloverfield isn't the monster destroying NYC, but the disaster of a broken-heart. Heck, that's the same conclusion as Autumn in New York--is this really a monster movie? Cloverfield fails as a monster movie because it doesn't offer us any difference from ourselves.