The apocalyptic monster movie Cloverfield, with its Camcorder-eye view of Manhattan being flattened by an aggrieved, bellowing beastie from the sea, was already well defined in the public mind as "Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project" long before it opened. It used to be that this kind of mixed-marriage pitch was a staple of Hollywood satire, an easy laugh at the industry's blatant embrace of unoriginality. By now, after a few decades of Entertainment Tonight and Entertainment Weekly teaching lay people to think of movies in terms of grosses and big weekend openings, even ticket buyers are conditioned to think of a movie's resemblance to other movies as some kind of come-on. J. J. Abrams, whose Bad Robot company produced Cloverfield (and who is probably the creator most strongly associated with it, even though he neither wrote nor directed it), has also taken credit, in a roundabout way, for the most striking image featured in its trailer, that of the head of the Statue of Liberty being used as a bowling ball, by saying that he'd always felt gypped that there was no such image in John Carpenter's Escape from New York, even though that movie's poster showed the Statue's head lying discarded in the street. But there's another movie that in its structure bears a striking resemblance to Cloverfield: Miracle Mile, written and directed by Steve De Jarnatt and released to nothing better than mildly cultish appreciation back in 1989. The fact that a moviemaking team that takes so much pride in its influences has not — to my knowledge, anyway — done much to advertise their debt to De Jarnatt's film may indicate that the similarities are coincidental, or it may just prove that nobody wants to brag about building their hit on the bones of an underappreciated, semi-forgotten (and better) picture.
[Please Note: Spoilers to Follow. You have been warned]
CLOVERFIELD: The movie opens with the information that Beth (played by a very pretty young woman) and Rob (played by an even prettier young man) have fallen in love, but due to some miscommunication for which they both may be to blame, they quarrel and split acrimoniously on the evening of Rob's big going-away party. At that ill-timed moment, the apocalypse shows up, in the form of a giant, rampaging monster, and Rob tears through the increasingly chaotic metropolis that is Manhattan in a state of nocturnal panic, to be with the woman he loves. Thanks to his gallant heroism, which is depicted in something close to real time, they manage to reconnect, but an attempt to flee by government helicopter fails. The movie concludes with Beth and Rob dying in the rubble of Central Park, but their end is at least a small triumph of the heart: they have the chance to die together with the words "I love you" on their lips. Immortalized in the home-video footage collected and preserved by the government, they will live on in memory as a testament to the tender emotions of those lost in the monster's attack.
MIRACLE MILE: The movie opens with the information that Harry (played by Anthony Edwards in engaging, likable-geek mode) and Julie (played by Mare Winningham as a lovable geekette) have fallen in love, but Harry is reluctant to tell Julie that he loves her because he has commitment problems. He resolves to take the plunge when he and Julie are set to meet one night, but due to some miscommunication for which a power outage and malfunctioning alarm clock are to blame, he fails to show up. Wandering the nocturnal city alone, Harry learns that the apocalypse is coming in on the next train, in the form of a nuclear attack. Harry tears through the increasingly chaotic metropolis that is Los Angeles in a state of panic, to be with the woman he loves. Thanks to his gallant heroism, which is depicted in something close to real time, they manage to reconnect, but an attempt to flee by government helicopter fails. The movie concludes with Harry and Julie dying in the mire of the La Brea Tar Pits, but their end is at least a small triumph of the heart: they have the chance to die together with the words "I love you" on their lips. Like the dinosaurs, they will join the fossil record, living on in memory as a testament to man's folly.
It goes without saying that the feel and texture of the two movies could hardly be more different, though there are traces in Cloverfield of a yearning to express something close to the romantic sweetness of Miracle Mile; it's outside the movie's range, partly because it would get in the way of the spectacle, partly because the characters lack the individual spark of the people in Miracle Mile. (On the other hand, they also lack the unpolished averageness of the people in The Blair Witch Project, a quality that made it easier to believe that movie might really be a record of something that had happened. If you think that the people onscreen count for more than your taste in gimmickry, Cloverfield is actually more like Godzilla meets Make Me a Supermodel.) It might be nice if some of the attention being paid to Cloverfield could be siphoned off in Miracle Mile's direction, assuming that the clock hasn't already completely run out on Cloverfield's fifteen minutes. Miracle Mile was in some ways its writer-director's real feature debut; the script was named one of the ten best unproduced screenplays by American Film magazine in 1983, the same year that De Jarnatt got his first screen credit for his work on the screenplay of Strange Brew, starring Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as Bob and Doug Mackenzie. De Jarnatt had sold it to a studio that had no interest in letting him direct it; he was later able to buy it back, after working as a writer and director on the mid-1980s revival of the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents and writing and directing the straight-to-cable sci-fi romance Cherry 2000. Since then, he's done a lot of TV, and he had a hand in launching the offbeat horror series American Gothic and Kindred: The Embraced. But in the almost twenty years since Miracle Mile was completed, he hasn't made another movie.