Creature Features
Lili’s Pick: The Host (2006)
Lanie’s Pick: Cloverfield
Scary can come in all sorts of varieties—psychological, physiological, analogical, virological, liturgical, allegorical—but this week, we wanted to explore one of the most classic and fundamental themes of the horror genre: the creature feature. Whether it be a creation of man, an act of god, or some cruel combination of the two, when monsters attack, all hell is meant to break loose. A good creature feature can be hard to find, as technology and special effects are always trying to catch up with our ever-expanding imagination of horror. Good monster flicks are so hard to come by because they’re incredibly hard to make, but Bong Joon-ho’s The Host and Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield were both able to capture that sense of impending doom so well by creating two equally terrifying, equally ruthless creatures. The Host had all of the charm, fortuitous heartbreak, and critique of environmental exploitation one comes to expect from a Bong Joon-ho film, with the added bonus of a uniquely-horrifying monster. And in trademark Bong Joon-ho fashion, The Host offers many lovably eccentric characters that will ultimately break your heart but leave you glued to the screen. It leans more toward thriller than horror, but the creature in question is still fairly frightening and leaves no room for mercy. Cloverfield presents a creature of an entirely different breed, method, and stature. Matt Reeves’ painfully-2008 horror movie spends its first act teasing us with glimpses of a creature of Brobdingnagian proportions, that ultimately creates a dizzying kind of anxiety that only becomes heightened when the fully-realized beast is revealed. The cast of young Hollywood-hopefuls make this movie funny as well as unnerving, as we see many of them brutally killed with no hesitation, and no warning. The shakiness of the camera was almost too much to bear at certain points, but for this sensitive viewer, it never reached a Blair Witch Project-level of unwatchable. I also found it somewhat hilarious that this found-footage-style film chose not to cast complete-unknowns, but instead Lizzie Caplan, T.J. Miller, Ben Feldman, and Mike Vogel—actors who all pretty much remained in the spotlight and have acted steadily in comedies ever since. That either speaks to the casting director’s preference to use budding talent or their lack of faith in these actor’s longevity. Regardless, Cloverfield was wayyy scarier than I anticipated. I fully expected to be disappointed by yet another creature feature that forced my imagination to do all of the work, but instead this movie delivered a terrifyingly immersive experience.
