My Cloverfield Weekend

"What the fuck was that?" I kept asking myself, after catching glimpses of the Cloverfield creature.

The movie definitely worked for me- I grew up appreciating Godzilla, King Kong and other monster movies. So I was trying to figure out- was it humanoid? Wait- that massive foot's T-Rex-like! It's reptilian! But what the frack are those things dropping off that thing? Hang on- they're like bugs from Starship Troopers...

All while trying to keep up with the frenetic camera movement and the shouts and screams from a terrified downtown Manhattan.

What I Knew About Cloverfield (before seeing it on the big screen).

I remembered seeing the trailer just before the Transformers movie last summer- we see a bunch of people partying from the point-of-view of someone's handycam- it seemed pretty ordinary enough, until something blows up behind the New York skyline- and the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty drops down from the sky. No movie title. Just that it's from J.J. Abrams and it's coming out soon.

Wow, that worked for me- first thing I did when I got home from the Transformers movie was to Google up J.J. Abrams' latest projects. There was a huge online buzz right after the nameless trailer was shown- it could have been anything- a "Lost" movie, some 9-11-inspired project- but hey, if there's a J.J. Abrams stamp on it, it was very most likely cool. All we knew was that they deliberately didn't show any movie title on it. And that the project was codenamed "Cloverfield".

It wasn't long until the second trailer hit the internet- and this time, we catch a glimpse of the massive creature lumbering behind a ruined building in the not-so-far distance.

Then you had blogs and websites all fired up- it was a viral marketing campaign- not unlike what these same guys did with "Lost". Everyone was trying to figure out what the creature was- some alien thing, a mutated whale, a godzilla-like monster, a leviathan woken up from centuries of slumber. You had MySpace profiles for the characters, sonar images of something huge approaching Manhattan, and even a sample of the creature's roar.

You gotta hand it to J.J.- he knows how to hit his target market. Heck, it worked on me.

My Take on Cloverfield.

I liked it. Very much. I think it was a refreshingly different take on the usual monster movies.

Yeah it was a little "Blair Witch"-like. But I didn't like the "Blair Witch Project" (I didn't see any witch for Bob's sake!). I mean, sure, it had great back stories, I like the way they set things up, but the movie left me disappointed and unfulfilled because there were so many ways they could've played with the story- but for some reason, just left it that way.

The movie had pretty much explained itself from the beginning: the military salvages some video footage from a tape found in the area that used to be Central Park (used to be? oh, OK, so we know something happened to Central Park), and we're about to check out said tape. So it's gonna be like watching the entirety of somebody's home movie- but of course we know that it's going to take a turn for the worse somewhere sometime soon.

Through this one 'tape', we get introduced to the main characters (virtual Hollywood unknowns- good move!) and it paints a picture of what's going down. Of course we know there's a monster attacking New York in here somewhere- I just wanted to know what it could do, where it came from and what it looked like, really.

I liked how the movie paid attention to details of the contemporary setting- how people were taking pics of the decapitated Statue of Liberty with their mobile phones and the amount of firepower the military responded with (infantry with AT4 rockets, an M1 Abrams blasting away, volleys from an MLRS, F/A-18s and a B2 bombing run).

What left me rather bewildered was- what was the creature's motivation? Was it really hell-bent on destruction? Were we being invaded by an alien force? Was it just hungry and cranky after waking up from a millenium of sleep?

It was only later that I found out that the producers deliberately left out the creature's biological rationale- opting to stay faithful with the one-person-POV angle.

Nevertheless, we do get a close-up of the big guy- like a finale of sorts- but not before he leaves half of Manhattan in ruins. I am so going to get me a toy figure of this thing when it hits the shelves.

Lessons Learned from Cloverfield.

Just like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Snakes on a Plane", we learn this: If you're going to generate a whole lot of online/viral marketing buzz, you have got to have a solid, likeable story behind it. Fortunately for Cloverfield, it did.

Of course the movie didn't work for some people- maybe they weren't the target audience to begin with- but for the intended market of the film, you'll hear praises, read about it in blogs, and see lots of sales from merchandising.

For me, the movie is a sign-of-the-times. It's almost like user-generated-content posted on YouTube- it doesn't have to have big names, nor does it have to look professionally made- it just has to fuck with your mind, make you ask questions, reel you in.

We know that J.J. just made a lot of money and earned a lot of praise and bragging rights on this venture- I say more power to him. (Very well played, J.J.- now let's see that new Star Trek movie you're working on...)

This post originally came out in another blog of mine, "Renzie's Rants and Raves". I moved it to this blog shortly after creating it in March 2008.