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Plot summary The movie opens with a "Property of the U.S. Government" watermarked screen declaring that the viewers are watching a "Digital SDMemory Card" of video pertaining to U.S. Case Designate "Cloverfield", found in an area "formerly known as Central Park". The found footage that follows makes up the rest of the movie, all shot via a hand-held camera point- of-view.
On April 27 at 6:41am, Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) awakes after spending the night with Beth (Odette Yustman) in her father's Columbus Circle apartment. They soon plan to visit Coney Island for the day.
On May 22, Rob's brother Jason (Mike Vogel) and his girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas) prepare a Manhattan apartment for Rob's farewell party, as he has accepted a job in Japan. Jason gives Rob's best friend "Hud" (T. J. Miller)the task of recording final goodbyes from family and friends at theparty; Hud instead spends much of his time attempting to woo Marlena (Lizzy Caplan).
Beth arrives with a date, which upsets Rob. To his dismay, herealizes Hud is taping over the video of his and Beth's trip to ConeyIsland; footage that shows up intermittently throughout the film. Lilyreveals Rob and Beth slept together, but he never called her afterwardsbecause he was leaving for Japan. Rob provokes Beth into abruptlyleaving the party. Jason and Hud attempt to convince Rob to pursue arelationship with her, despite the fact that Beth left angrily.
The building suddenly rocks with earthquake-intensity as loud,animal-like noises reverberate outside. Large parts of the city brieflylose power and an explosion follows, as the head of the Statue of Libertyis thrown onto the street before them. More explosions occur and Hudcaptures an on-camera glimpse of a gargantuan creature in the distance.Rob, Hud, Jason and Lily come across Marlena, who is shell-shocked andsays "it was eating people."
The five resolve to leave Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge,and Hud decides to continue recording so people can research theincident's events later. Rob gets a call from a distressed Beth, who isstuck in her father's apartment, unable to move. Just then, the tail ofthe monster kills Jason as it strikes the section of the bridge that heis standing on, and causes the rest to collapse. The four escape andgrieve over Jason, as nearby televisions in an electronics store show U.S. Military ground forces being attacked by dog-sized, parasiticarthropods which fall from the large creature's body. The group decides to rescue Beth, though this means they must reach Midtown Manhattan.
After being caught between the monster and an assault by military ground personnel, the friends take refuge in a subwaystation. They walk through the tunnels and away from the battleoverhead, only to fend off a collection of the parasites, one of whichbites Marlena. The group then reaches a U.S. Armyfield hospital,where Marlena, already weak and dizzy, begins bleeding profusely.General alarm occurs once the soldiers realize she has been bitten, andthey force her behind a screen where her torso appears to expand andexplode. Upset, Rob convinces the military to allow him and his friendsto go find Beth. A sympathetic soldier leads them to the streets, butwarns of the "Hammerdown" protocol, which if necessary, will have allof Manhattan island bombed in order to destroy the creature. He givesthem the time and location of an evacuation site.
The group continues to Beth's apartment in the twin-towered Time Warner Center,[7]where one of its towers is leaning into the other. They decide to climbthe standing tower, cross onto the leaning tower's roof and work theirway down to Beth's apartment, where they find her alive but impaled tothe floor. After setting her free, they backtrack and make their way tothe evacuation site, where Lily is forced into the last seat of adeparting helicopter without her friends. Rob, Beth, and Hud boardanother helicopter as an initial bombing run takes place, seeming tokill the monster. Hud celebrates, only for the helicopter to be hit asthe monster lunges out of the debris, sending them crashing into Central Park.They survive, but a voice on the helicopter's radio signals for"Hammerdown" to begin in 15 minutes. As the friends escape, Hud dropsthe camera and returns for it, only to find himself underneath thecreature, which kills him. With Hud dead, Rob retrieves the camera.
Rob and Beth take shelter under a Central Park bridge amidair-sirens. They address anyone watching and pay tribute to theirkilled friends before explosions cause the bridge to collapse aroundthem. Obscured from the camera by debris, the two confess their lovefor each other before a second explosion ends the recording. The lastfootage shown depicts Rob and Beth ending their day at Coney Island, inwhich an object can be seen falling from the sky into the oceansurrounding them.[8] The credits are shown, and a short radio transmission plays.[9]
Development The poster for Escape from New York (1981) inspired the scene of the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty in Cloverfield
J. J. Abrams conceived of a new monster after he and his son visited a toy store in Japan while promoting Mission: Impossible III. He explained, "We saw all these Godzilla toys, and I thought, we need our own [American] monster, and not King Kong, King Kong's adorable. I wanted something that was just insane and intense."[11] In February 2007, Paramount Pictures secretly greenlitCloverfield, to be produced by Abrams, directed by Matt Reeves, and written by Drew Goddard. The project was produced by Abrams' company, Bad Robot Productions.[12] The decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty was inspired by the poster of the 1981 film Escape from New York,which had shown the head lying in the streets in New York despite notappearing in the film itself. According to Reeves, "It's an incrediblyprovocative image. And that was the source that inspired [producer]J.J. [Abrams] to say, 'Now this would be an interesting idea for amovie.'"[13] The film was titled Cloverfield from the beginning, but thetitle changed throughout production before it was finalized as theoriginal title. Matt Reeves explained that the title was changedfrequently due to the hype caused by the teaser trailer, "Thatexcitement spread to such a degree that we suddenly couldn't use thename anymore. So we started using all these names like Slusho and Cheese.[14]And people always found out what we were doing!" The director said that"Cloverfield" was the government's case designate for the monster,comparing the titling to that of the Manhattan Project."And it's not a project per se. It's the way that this case has beendesignated. That's why that is on the trailer, and it becomes clearerin the film. It's how they refer to this phenomenon [or] this case,"said the director.[15] The film's final title, "Cloverfield", is the name of the exit Abrams takes to his Santa Monica office.[16][14] Marketing
Filmmakers decided to create a teaser trailer that would be asurprise in the light of commonplace media saturation, which they puttogether during the preparation stage of the production process. Theteaser was then used as a basis for the film itself. Paramount Picturesencouraged the teaser to be released without a title attached, and the Motion Picture Association of America approved the move.[23] As Transformers showed high tracking numbers before its release in July 2007, the studio attached the teaser trailer for Cloverfield that showed the release date of January 18, 2008 but not the title.[12] A second trailer was released on November 16, 2007, which confirmed the title.[27] The studio had kept knowledge of the project secret from the online community, a cited rarity due to the presence of scoopersthat follow upcoming films. The controlled release of information onthe film has been observed as a risky strategy, which could succeedlike The Blair Witch Project (1999) or disappoint like Snakes on a Plane(2006), the latter of which had generated online hype but failed toattract large audiences. Chad Hartigan of Exhibitor Relations Co.viewed the several issues with the potential of the film, including alack of major stars, the underwhelming performance of Godzilla-stylefilms in America, and the film's slated release in January, considereda "dumping ground for bad films".[28] Pre-release plot speculation The sudden appearance of the untitled trailer for Cloverfield fueled media speculation over the film's plot. USA Today reported the possibilities of the film being based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, a live-action adaptation of Voltron, a new film about Godzilla, or a spin-off of the TV show Lost.[29]The Star Ledger also reported the possibility of the film being based on Lovecraft lore or Godzilla.[30]The Guardian also reported the possibility of a Lost spin-off,[31] while Time Out reported that the film was about an alien called The Parasite.[32]IGN also backed the possibility of the same premise, with The Parasite rumored to be a working title for the film.[15] Online, Slusho and Colossus had also been discussed as possible titles.[33]Entertainment Weekly also disputed reports that the film would be about a parasite or a colossal Asian robot such as Voltron.[34] Visitors of the website Ain't It Cool News have pointed out 9/11 allusions based on the destruction in New York City such as the decapitated Statue of Liberty. The film has also drawn alternate reality game enthusiasts that have followed other viral marketing campaigns like those set up for the TV series Lost, the video game Halo 2, the Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero, and the upcoming Batman film The Dark Knight.Members of the forums at argn.com and unfiction.com have investigatedthe background of the film, with the "1-18-08" section at Unfictiongenerating over 7,700 posts in August 2007. The members have studiedphotographs on the film's official site, potentially related MySpace profiles,[35] and the Comic-Con teaser poster for the film.[28] A popular piece of fan art posited that the monster was a mutated blue whale.[26] Viral tie-ins
Photos on the 1-18-08.com viral marketing website.
Puzzle websites containing Lovecraftian elements, such as Ethan Haas Was Right, were originally reported to be connected to the film.[29][31] On July 9, 2007, producer J. J. Abramsstated that, while a number of websites were being developed to marketthe film, the only official site that had been found was 1-18-08.com.[36]At the site, a collection of time-coded photos are provided to visitorsto piece together a series of events and interpret their meanings.[37] Also, leaving the website open for a period of time (7-10 minutes) plays a recording of the monster's roar.
As part of the viral marketing campaign, the drink Slusho! has served as a tie-in. The drink had previously appeared in producer Abrams' previous creation, the TV series Alias.[38] Viral websites for Slusho! and a Japanese drilling company named Tagruato were launched to add to the mythology of Cloverfield.[6] When Cloverfield was hosted at Comic-Con 2007, gray Slusho! t–shirts were distributed to attendees.[39] Fans who had registered at the Slusho! website for Cloverfield received e-mails of fictional sonar images prior to the film's release that showed a deep-sea creature heading toward Manhattan.[40] Producer Bryan Burk explained the viral tie-in, "[It] was all donein conjunction with the studio… The whole experience in making thismovie is very reminiscent [of] how we did Lost."[6] Director Matt Reeves described Slusho! as "part of the involved connectivity" with Abrams' Alias and that the drink represented a "meta-story" for Cloverfield.The director explained, "It's almost like tentacles that grow out ofthe film and lead, also, to the ideas in the film. And there's thisweird way where you can go see the movie and it's one experience… Butthere's also this other place where you can get engaged where there'sthis other sort of aspect for all those people who are into that. […]All the stories kind of bounce off one another and inform each other.But, at the end of the day, this movie stands on its own to be a movie.[…] The Internet sort of stories and connections and clues are, in away, a prism and they're another way of looking at the same thing. Tous, it's just another exciting aspect of the storytelling."[38]
Reception Cloverfield opened in 3,411 theaters on January 18, 2008 and grossed a total of $16,930,000on its opening day in the United States and Canada. It made $41,000,000on its opening weekend, making it the most successful January releasegross of all time. Worldwide, it has grossed $56 million.[44] As of January 19, 2008, review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 76% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 117 reviews.[45] According to Metacritic, the film has received an average critic score of 64%, based on 35 reviews.[46] Marc Savlov of The Austin Chroniclecalls the film "the most intense and original creature feature I'veseen in my adult moviegoing life […] a pure-blood, grade A, exultantlyexhilarating monster movie." He cites Matt Reeves'direction, the "whip-smart, stylistically invisible" script and the"nearly subconscious evocation of our current paranoid, terror-phobictimes" as the keys to the film's success, saying that telling the storythrough the lens of one character's camera "works fantastically well."[47] Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reportercalled it "chillingly effective", praising the effects and the film's"claustrophobic intensity". He said that though the characters "aren'tparticularly interesting or developed", there was "something refreshingabout a monster movie that isn't filled with the usual suspects."[48] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weeklysaid that the film was "surreptitiously subversive, [a] stylisticallyclever little gem", and that while the characters were "vapid,twenty-something nincompoops" and the acting "appropriatelyunmemorable", the decision to tell the story through amateur footagewas "brilliant".[49]Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Timeswrote that the film is "pretty scary at times" and cites "unmistakableevocations of 9/11". He concludes that "all in all, it is an effectivefilm, deploying its special effects well and never breaking theillusion that it is all happening as we see it."[50] Todd McCarthy of Varietycalled the film an "old-fashioned monster movie dressed up in trendynew threads", praising the special effects, "nihilistic attitude" and"post-9/11 anxiety overlay", but said, "In the end, [it's] not muchdifferent from all the marauding creature features that have comebefore it."[51] Scott Foundas of LA Weekly was critical of the film's allusions to the September 11, 2001 attacks and called it "cheap and opportunistic". He compared its "stealth" attempts at social commentary unfavorably to the films of Don Siegel, George A. Romero and Steven Spielberg,saying, "Where those filmmakers all had something meaningful to sayabout the state of the world and […] human nature, Abrams doesn't havemuch to say about anything."[52] Manohla Dargis in the New York Timescalled the allusions "tacky", saying, "[The images] may make you thinkof the attack, and you may curse the filmmakers for their vulgarity,insensitivity or lack of imagination", but that "the film is too dumbto offend anything except your intelligence." She concludes that thefilm "works as a showcase for impressively realistic-looking specialeffects, a realism that fails to extend to the scurrying humans whosefates are meant to invoke pity and fear but instead inspire yawns andcontempt."[20] Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.comcalls the film "badly constructed, humorless and emotionally sadistic",and sums up by saying that the film "takes the trauma of 9/11 and turnsit into just another random spectacle at which to point and shoot."[53] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribunewarned that the viewer may feel "queasy" at the references to September11, but that "other sequences […] carry a real jolt" and that suchtactics were "crude, but undeniably gripping". He called the film"dumb", but "quick and dirty and effectively brusque", concluding thatdespite it being "a harsher, more demographically calculating brand offun", he enjoyed the film.[54] Bruce Paterson of Cinephiliadescribed the film as "a successful experiment in style but notnecessarily a successful story for those who want dramatic closure."[55] Shaky camera Sign at an AMC theater warning customers
The film was filmed using shaky camerawork, because according to the plot it was filmed with a hand-held video cameraby one of the characters, Hud. However, this style of cinematographyleads many who view it inside dark movie theaters to experience vertigo,causing nausea and a temporary loss of balance. Some theaters showingthe film have posted warnings, informing viewers about the filmingstyle of Cloverfield.[56]
Sequel At the premiere of the film, Matt Reeves talked about possibilities on how a sequel will turn out if the film succeeds.[58] Reeves states:
Quote:
While we were on set makingthe film we talked about the possibilitiesand directions of how asequel can go. The fun of this movie was that itmight not have beenthe only movie being made that night, there might beanother movie! Intoday’s day and age of people filming their lives ontheir iPhones and Handycams, uploading it to YouTube… That was kind of exciting thinking about that.[59]
In another interview, Reeves states:
Quote:
There's a moment on theBrooklyn Bridge, and there was a guy filmingsomething on the side ofthe bridge, and Hud sees him filming and heturns over and he sees theship that's been capsized and sees theheadless Statue of Liberty, andthen he turns back and this guy'sbriefly filming him. In my mind thatwas two movies intersecting for abrief moment, and I thought there wassomething interesting in the ideathat this incident happened and thereare so many different points ofview, and there are several differentmovies at least happening thatevening and we just saw one piece ofanother.[26]
Reeves also points out that the end scene on Coney Island shows something falling into the ocean in the background.[26]Producers Bryan Burk and J.J. Abrams also announces their thoughts toEntertainment Weekly about possible sequel(s). Bryan Burk states:
Quote:
The creative team has fleshed out an entire backstory which, if we're lucky, we might get to explore in future films.[60]
Also Abrams states that he doesn't want to rush into the developmentof the sequel right away because of the first film's success, insteadhe wants to create a sequel that is true to the previous film.[60] At the end of January, Matt Reeves entered early talks with Paramount Pictures to direct a sequel to Cloverfield, which would likely be filmed before Reeves's other project, The Invisible Woman.[61] Reeves now said:
Quote:
The idea of doing somethingso differently is exhilarating. We hope thatit created a movieexperience that is different. The thing about doing asequel is that Ithink we all really feel protective of that experience.The key herewill be if we can find something that is compelling enoughand that isdifferent enough for us to do, then it will probably beworth doing.Obviously it also depends on how [Cloverfield] doesworldwideand all of those things too, but really, for us creatively, wejustwant to find something that would be another challenge.[62]
Even if there's nothing new going on here, the style and quality ofthis film injects a terrific sense of terror into the old monster movieformula.
A dazzling experiment that paid off immensely, this is cinematic pleasure at its purest.
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