Cloverfield
Encyclopedia
Cloverfield is a 2008 American disaster-monster film directed by Matt Reeves
, produced by J. J. Abrams
and written by Drew Goddard
.
The film follows six young New Yorkers attending a going-away party on the night that a gigantic monster
attacks the city. First publicized in a teaser trailer in screenings of Transformers, the film was released on January 17 in New Zealand
and Australia
, on January 18 in North America, on January 24 in South Korea
, on January 25 in Taiwan
, on January 31 in Germany and on February 1 in the United Kingdom, Ireland and in Italy. In Japan, the film was released on April 5.
VFX
and CGI
were performed by effects studios Double Negative
and Tippett Studio
.
from a personal video camera recovered by the United States Department of Defense
. A disclaimer text states that the footage is of a case designated "Cloverfield" and was found in the area "formerly known as Central Park
". The video consists chiefly of segments taped the night of Friday, May 22 and the morning of Saturday, May 23. The newer segments were taped over older video that is visible occasionally.
The first video segment opens when Rob wakes up on the morning of Monday, April 27 having slept with Beth, a previously platonic
friend. They make plans to go to Coney Island
that day. The footage suddenly cuts to May 22, when Rob's brother Jason and his girlfriend Lily prepare a farewell party for Rob who will be moving to Japan. At the party, their friend Hud uses a camera to film testimonials, and flirts unsuccessfully with Marlena, another party guest. After Beth leaves the party following an argument with Rob, an apparent earthquake strikes, and the city suffers a brief power outage.
The local news reports that an oil tanker
has capsized near Liberty Island
. Then another explosion causes the party-goers to evacuate the building. They see the head of the Statue of Liberty
crash nearby in the street, with several stunning scratch and bite marks. Hud records what appears to be a giant hand of a creature several blocks away. Rob, Jason, Lily, Hud and Marlena, along with a crowd of other civilians, attempt to escape Manhattan on the Brooklyn Bridge
. A gigantic tail comes down and destroys the center span of the bridge, killing Jason and others. The survivors flee back to Manhattan as the bridge collapses.
Rob discovers that Beth sent him a message and goes to an electronics store trying to get new batteries for his phone. Hud watches the news, which shows the United States Army
's 42nd Infantry Division attacking the monster and smaller "parasite" creatures falling off its body. Several of these creatures are seen attacking soldiers and civilians on the ground. Once Rob gets new batteries, he listens to Beth's message saying she is trapped in her apartment and unable to move.
Going against the crowd, Rob, Hud, Lily, and Marlena venture to Midtown Manhattan
to rescue Beth. They are soon caught in a crossfire between the monster and the military, and escape into a subway station. They walk through the subway tunnels but are attacked by several of the "parasite" creatures. Hud is nearly dragged away, and in the process of saving him, Marlena is bitten by one of them. They escape to a small room and come across a Bloomingdale's
department store where they are met by a squad of soldiers who have set up a field hospital and command center in the store. Marlena starts feeling sick. One of the personal notices this and the bite and has her taken back behind a large curtain where we can see her silhouette explode. One of the military leaders takes them in a back hall and lets them leave, but tells them when the last evacuation helicopter will depart before the military executes its "Hammer Down Protocol".
The group finds that Beth's building has collapsed against another building. They rescue Beth, who was trapped and impaled on a piece of rebar
. The four try to make their way to the evacuation site, where they encounter the monster once more over Grand Central Terminal
. Lily is raced into one departing U.S. Marine Corps helicopter. Moments later, Rob, Beth and Hud are taken away in a second helicopter and witness a U.S. Air Force
B-2 Spirit
bomb the monster. The monster falls. Just as Hud declares victory, the monster lunges and attacks the helicopter, causing it to crash into Central Park.
The film skips to less than an hour later, with a voice on the crashed helicopter's radio warning that the Hammerdown protocol will begin in 15 minutes and states that anyone able to hear the sirens is within the blast zone. The three friends regain consciousness and flee the helicopter. As they leave, Hud drops the camera. When he picks it up though, the monster is standing right over him. When the monster notices Hud, it stares at him intently before biting him in half. Rob and Beth repeatedly yell Hud over his dead body.
Rob and Beth grab the camera and take shelter under Greyshot Arch in Central Park as air raid sirens begin to blare and bombing starts. Rob and Beth take turns leaving their last testimonies of the day, which Rob mentions as Saturday, May 23. The bridge crumbles and debris covers the camera. The film then cuts to the footage of Rob and Beth's Coney Island date on April 27. In the distance, unnoticed by Rob and Beth, a large object falls into the ocean.
To prevent the leaking of plot information, instead of auditioning the actors with scenes from the film, scripts from Abrams' previous productions were used, such as television series Alias
and Lost
. Some scenes were also written specifically for the audition process, not intended for use in the film. Despite not being told the premise of the film, Lizzy Caplan stated that she accepted a role in Cloverfield solely because she was a fan of the Abrams-produced television series Lost (in which her former Related co-star Kiele Sanchez
was a recurring character), and her experience of discovering its true nature initially caused her to state that she would not sign on for a film in the future "without knowing full well what it is". She indicated that her character was a sarcastic outsider, and that her role, was "physically demanding". Ryan Key
, the guitarist and vocalist for pop punk
band Yellowcard
, made a small appearance in the film.
J. J. Abrams
thought up 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 like King Kong
. I love King Kong. King Kong is adorable. And Godzilla is a charming monster. We love Godzilla. But I wanted something that was just insane, and intense." There are three still frames in "pre-recorded" sequences, one from the movie Them! one from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
and one from King Kong - these three movies are also cited in the credits.
In February 2007, Paramount Pictures
secretly greenlit
Cloverfield, to be produced by Abrams, directed by Matt Reeves
and written by Drew Goddard
. The project was produced by Abrams' company, Bad Robot Productions
. The visual effects producer was Chantal Feghali.
The severed 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. According to Reeves, "It's an incredibly provocative image. And that was the source that inspired producer J. J. Abrams to say, 'Now this would be an interesting idea for a movie'."
. "And it's not a project per se. It's the way that this case has been designated. That's why that is on the trailer, and it becomes clearer in the film. It's how they refer to this phenomenon [or] this case", said the director. The film's final title, Cloverfield, is the name of the exit Abrams takes to his Santa Monica
office. In turn, the road used to lead to the Santa Monica Airport
, which originally bore the name Clover Field.
One final title, Greyshot, was proposed before the movie was officially titled Cloverfield. The name Greyshot is taken from the archway that the two survivors take shelter under at the end of the movie. Director Matt Reeves said that it was decided not to change the title to Greyshot because the film was already so well known as Cloverfield.
The film received a subtitle in Japan
, where it was released as . The subtitle "Destroyer" was chosen by Abrams and was translated into Japanese as by Paramount Japan at his request. The subtitle was chosen for the manga
spinoff, Cloverfield/Kishin
, released exclusively in Japan.
F23 high-definition video
camera to film nearly all of the New York exterior scenes. Filming took place on Coney Island
, with scenes shot at Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park
and the B&B Carousel. The scenes of tanks firing at the creature while the main characters hide in a stairwell were filmed on Hennesy Street on Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, CA. Some interior shots were filmed on a soundstage at Downey, California
, Bloomingdale's in the movie was actually filmed in an emptied Robinsons-May
store that was under reconstruction in Arcadia, California
, and the outside scenes of Sephora
and the electronics store were filmed in Downtown Los Angeles
.
The film was shot and edited in a cinéma vérité
style, to look like it was filmed with one hand-held camera, including jump cut
s similar to ones found in home movies
. T. J. Miller
, who plays Hud, has said in various interviews that he filmed a third of the movie and almost half of it made it into the film. Director Matt Reeves described the presentation, "We wanted this to be as if someone found a Handicam, took out the tape and put it in the player to watch it. What you're watching is a home movie that then turns into something else." Reeves explained that the pedestrians documenting the severed head of the Statue of Liberty with the camera phones was reflective of the contemporary period. According to him: "Cloverfield very much speaks to the fear and anxieties of our time, how we live our lives. Constantly documenting things and putting them up on YouTube
, sending people videos through e-mail – we felt it was very applicable to the way people feel now."
Several of the filmmakers are heard but not seen in the film. The man yelling "Oh my God!" repeatedly when the head of the Statue of Liberty lands in the street is producer Bryan Burk
, and director Matt Reeves voiced the whispered radio broadcast at the end of the credits.
After viewing a cut of the film, Steven Spielberg
suggested giving the audience a hint at the fate of the monster during the climax, which resulted in the addition of a countdown overheard on the helicopter's radio and the sounding of air raid sirens to signal the forthcoming Hammerdown bombing.
"Tippett Studio" were enlisted to develop the visual effects for Cloverfield. Because the visual effects were incorporated after filming, cast members had to react to a non-existent creature during scenes, only being familiar with early conceptual renderings of the beast. Artist Neville Page designed the monster, thoroughly creating a biological rationale for the creature, even if many of his ideas like "elongated, and articulated external esophagus" would not show up on screen. The key idea behind the monster was that he was an immature creature suffering from "separation anxiety
". This recalls real-life elephants who get frightened and lash out at the circus, because the director felt "there's nothing scarier than something huge that's spooked".
carried out a viral marketing
campaign to promote the film which included viral tie-ins similar to Lost Experience
. Filmmakers decided to create a teaser trailer that would be a surprise in the light of commonplace media saturation, which they put together during the preparation stage of the production process. The teaser was then used as a basis for the film itself. Paramount Pictures encouraged the teaser to be released without a title attached, and the Motion Picture Association of America
approved the move. 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. A second trailer was released on November 16, 2007 which was attached to Beowulf
, confirming the title.
The studio had kept knowledge of the project secret from the online community, a cited rarity due to the presence of scoopers
that follow upcoming films. The controlled release of information on the film has been observed as a risky strategy, which could succeed like The Blair Witch Project
(1999) or disappoint like Snakes on a Plane
(2006), the latter of which had generated online hype but failed to attract large audiences.
reported the possibilities of the film being based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft
, a live-action adaptation of Voltron
(based on a mis-interpretation of the trailer's line "It's alive!" as "It's a lion!"), a new film about Godzilla
, or a spin-off of the TV show Lost
. The Star Ledger also reported the possibility of the film being based on Lovecraft lore or Godzilla. The Guardian reported the possibility of a Lost spin-off, while Time Out reported that the film was about an alien called "The Parasite". IGN
also backed the possibility of that premise, with The Parasite rumored to be a working title for the film. Online, Slusho and Colossus had been discussed as other possible titles, as well as Monstrous, although this was dispelled by Abrams at ComicCon. Entertainment Weekly also disputed reports that the film would be about a parasite or a colossal Asian robot such as Voltron.
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 games Halo 2
and Halo 3
. Members of the forums at argn.com and unfiction.com have investigated the background of the film, with the "1-18-08" section at Unfiction generating over 7,700 posts in August 2007. The members have studied photographs on the film's official site, potentially related MySpace
profiles, and the Comic-Con teaser poster for the film. A popular piece of fan art
posited that the monster was a mutated Humpback Whale
.
Unlike most viral campaigns, Cloverfield's marketing had virtually nothing to do with the movie itself, and instead concentrated on a fictional evil Slushy company. Puzzle websites containing Lovecraftian elements, such as Ethan Haas Was Right, were originally reported to be connected to the film. On July 9, 2007, producer J. J. Abrams
stated that, while a number of websites were being developed to market the film, the only official site that had been found was 1-18-08.com. At the site, a collection of time-coded photos are provided to visitors to piece together a series of events and interpret their meanings. The pictures can also be flipped over – by repeatedly and rapidly moving the mouse side to side. Also, while on 1-18-08.com, if the page is left open long enough, the monster's roar can be heard. Eventually, www.cloverfieldmovie.com was created. The site provided both a trailer and a number, 33287, which, when texted from a mobile phone, provided a ringtone of the monster's roar and a wallpaper of a decimated Manhattan. This eventually turns out to be a Paramount number (people later received material on Iron Man
, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Kung Fu Panda
, and The Love Guru
).
The drink Slusho! served as part of the viral marketing
campaign. The drink had already appeared in producer Abrams' previous creation, the TV series Alias
. Viral websites for Slusho! and a Japanese drilling company named were launched to add to the mythology of Cloverfield. A building bearing the company logo for Tagruato can also be seen in the TV spot of the eleventh Star Trek film, another Abrams production. When Cloverfield was hosted at Comic-Con 2007, gray Slusho! T-shirts were distributed to attendees. Fans who had registered at the Slusho! website for Cloverfield received e-mails of fictional sonar
images before the film's release that showed a deep-sea creature heading toward Manhattan.
Producer Bryan Burk explained the viral tie-in, "It was all done in conjunction with the studio... The whole experience in making this movie is very reminiscent of how we did Lost
." 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 of the film and lead, also, to the ideas in the film. And there's this weird way where you can go see the movie and it's one experience... But there's also this other place where you can get engaged where there's this 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 a way, a prism and they're another way of looking at the same thing. To us, it's just another exciting aspect of the storytelling."
series by Yoshiki Togawa titled was released by Japanese publisher Kadokawa Shoten
. The story focuses on a Japanese high school student named Kishin Aiba, who somehow bears a connection to the monster.
Based on the successful opening weekend of Cloverfield in theaters, Hasbro
began accepting orders for a 14 inches (35.6 cm) collectible toy figure of the monster with authentic sound and its parasites that were shipped to fans by December 24, 2008.
, with the exception of the composition "Roar! (Cloverfield Overture)" by Michael Giacchino
that plays over the end credits. Similarities between "Roar!" and the music of Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube
have been noted, and it has been suggested that Giacchino's overture is a tribute to Ifukube's work, which was confirmed by Matt Reeves
in the DVD's commentary track. The sound track was supervised by William Files and Douglas Murray at Skywalker Sound
.
Rob's Party Mix or Cloverfield Mix is a collection of the music played in the opening party sequences of the film that was released exclusively on Apple's iTunes
store on January 22, 2008 in lieu of a traditional soundtrack album. The Cloverfield score, "Roar! (Cloverfield Overture)" by Michael Giacchino that plays over the end credits is not featured on the album, as it is the mixtape
played at the party and is not the official soundtrack of the film. This album was distributed to guests at a Cloverfield premiere party held at the Dark Room in New York City
on January 17, 2008.
A complete soundtrack release of all the music in the film, including Giacchino's "Roar!" end title piece, has now also been released exclusively on iTunes; it has not been officially released in retail stores. A CD entitled Rob's Party Mix comes packaged in a special edition of Cloverfield made available for sale in Canadian Wal-Mart
stores beginning on April 22, 2008.
reported that 77% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 192 reviews. According to Metacritic
, the film has received an average
score of 64, based on 37 reviews. And on Spill.com
, it got their highest rating of 'Better Than Sex!'.
Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle calls the film "the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in my adult moviegoing life [...] a pure-blood, grade A, exhilarating monster movie." He cites Matt Reeves
' direction, the "whip-smart, stylistically invisible" script and the "nearly subconscious
evocation of our current paranoid, terror
-phobic times" as the keys to the film's success, saying that telling the story through the lens of one character's camera "works fantastically well". Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter
called it "chillingly effective", praising the effects and the film's "claustrophobic intensity". He said that though the characters "aren't particularly interesting or developed", there was "something refreshing about a monster movie that isn't filled with the usual suspects". Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly
said that the film was "surreptitiously subversive, [a] stylistically clever little gem", and that while the characters were "vapid, twenty-something nincompoops" and the acting "appropriately unmemorable", the decision to tell the story through amateur footage was "brilliant". Roger Ebert
in the Chicago Sun-Times
wrote that the film is "pretty scary at times" and cites "unmistakable evocations of 9/11". He concludes that "all in all, it is an effective film, deploying its special effects well and never breaking the illusion that it is all happening as we see it".
Todd McCarthy of Variety
called the film an "old-fashioned monster movie dressed up in trendy new threads", praising the special effects, "nihilistic attitude" and "post-9/11 anxiety overlay", but said, "In the end, [it's] not much different from all the marauding creature features that have come before it". Scott Foundas of LA Weekly
was critical of the film's use of scenes reminiscent of the September 11, 2001 attacks
in New York City
and called it "cheap and opportunistic". He suggested that the film was engaging in "stealth" attempts at social commentary and compared this unfavorably to the films of Don Siegel
, George A. Romero
and Steven Spielberg
, saying, "Where those filmmakers all had something meaningful to say about the state of the world and [...] human nature, Abrams doesn't have much to say about anything". Manohla Dargis in the New York Times
called the allusions "tacky", saying, "[The images] may make you think of the attack, and you may curse the filmmakers for their vulgarity, insensitivity or lack of imagination", but that "the film is too dumb to offend anything except your intelligence". She concludes that the film "works as a showcase for impressively realistic-looking special effects, a realism that fails to extend to the scurrying humans whose fates
are meant to invoke pity and fear but instead inspire yawns and contempt." Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com
calls the film "badly constructed, humorless and emotionally sadistic", and sums up by saying that the film "takes the trauma
of 9/11 and turns it into just another random spectacle at which to point and shoot". Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune
warned that the viewer may feel "queasy" at the references to September 11, but that "other sequences [...] carry a real jolt" and that such tactics were "crude, but undeniably gripping". He called the film "dumb", but "quick and dirty and effectively brusque", concluding that despite it being "a harsher, more demographically calculating brand of fun", he enjoyed the film. Bruce Paterson of Cinephilia described the film as "a successful experiment in style but not necessarily a successful story for those who want dramatic closure".
Cloverfield appeared on some critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008. Empire
magazine named it the fifth best film of 2008. The prestigious French film journal Cahiers du Cinéma
named the film as the third best of 2008. Bloody Disgusting
ranked the film number twenty in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article calling the film "A brilliant conceit, to be sure, backed by a genius early marketing campaign that followed the less-is-more philosophy to tantalizing effect... much like Blair Witch
nearly ten years earlier, Cloverfield helped prove, particularly in its first half hour, that what you don’t see can be the scariest thing of all."
The movie was nominated for four awards: It was nominated for two Saturn Award
s for "Best supporting actress (Lizzy Caplan)" and "Best science fiction film". It was nominated for two Golden Trailer Awards for "Best Thriller for Trailer" and "Most original trailer". The film went on to win a Saturn Award for "Best science fiction film". It was also ranked #12 on Bravo's 13 Scarier Movie Moments.
The film's shaky camera
style of cinematography, dubbed "La Shakily Queasy-Cam" by Roger Ebert, caused some viewers (particularly in darkened movie theaters) to experience motion sickness, including nausea
and a temporary loss of balance. Audience members prone to migraines have cited the film as a trigger. Some theaters showing the film, such as AMC Theatres
, provided posted and verbal warnings, informing viewers about the filming style of Cloverfield while other theatres like Pacific Theatres
just verbally warned guests in detail at the box office about experiencing motion sickness upon viewing the film and what to do if they had to step out and vomit.
The cinematography influences the encoding
of the video and can cause compression artifact
s to fast motion across the field of view.
-book" special edition that was sold at Suncoast
and FYE
retailers in the US and Future Shop
in Canada. Other store exclusives include an exclusive bonus disc titled "T.J. Miller's Video Diary" with the DVD at all Best Buy
retailers, an exclusive mix CD titled "Rob's Goin' to Japan Party Mix" with the DVD at all Target
and Wal-Mart
retailers and an exclusive ringtone with the DVD at all Kmart
and Sears retailers. Borders
also has an exclusive booklet encased with their DVD.
The Region 2
DVD was released on June 9 in both one-disc and two-disc editions. The limited steelbook edition is only available from HMV
, while Play.com
offers exclusive cover artwork. The HMV-exclusive steelbook contains two discs.
The DVD includes two alternative endings, which vary only slightly. The first alternative ending shows Rob and Beth exiting the Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue station instead of on the Ferris wheel and features different sirens in the background as Rob talks to the camera. In the second alternative ending, just after the final explosion, Beth can be heard screaming "Rob!", followed by a very brief clip of an unknown person looking at the camera (in the commentary, Matt Reeves said that it was one of the crew members) and brushing rubble off the lens. The film then ends with the original final clip of Rob and Beth on their Coney Island
date recording themselves on the ferris wheel as the camera tape runs out, with two differences: there is no timestamp
in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, and there is an additional beeping tone indicating the end of the tape.
A Blu-ray
edition was released on June 3, 2008. It includes a "Special Investigation Mode," as well as all the bonus features of the 2-disc DVD in HD.
... That was kind of exciting thinking about that."
In another interview, Reeves states:
Reeves also points out that the end scene on Coney Island shows something falling into the ocean in the background but didn't give out details. This may have been either the satellite owned by the fictional Japanese media company Tagruato, or the creature itself.
Producers Bryan Burk and J. J. Abrams also announced their thoughts to Entertainment Weekly about possible sequels. According to Bryan Burk, "The creative team has fleshed out an entire backstory which, if we're lucky, we might get to explore in future films".
Abrams stated that he does not want to rush into the development of the sequel because of the first film's success and would rather create a sequel that is true to the previous film.
At the end of January 2008, 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. Reeves now said:
In an interview with Attack of the Show, J. J. Abrams had stated that they might abandon the filming style, stating that he and the rest of the crew would like to try something new.
In September 2008, when asked by CraveOnline
what the current status is on Cloverfield 2, Abrams stated that at this point, they are still discussing it; however, he still feels reluctant to work on a sequel. In the same interview, Abrams said that they were working on something that "could be kind of cool." When asked if it would take place in a different location, Abrams replied by saying that "It would be a totally different kind of thing but it's too early to talk about."
In January 2011, horror film fan site BloodyDisgusting.com stated that a Cloverfield sequel may in fact never happen. They talked to director Reeves and he said that if he can ever get the time to sit down and talk with Drew Goddard and J. J. Abrams about sequel possibilities they will certainly make a sequel, but due to all three's busy schedules Reeves does not see this happening any time soon.
The film Super 8
was initially reported to be either a sequel or prequel to Cloverfield, but this was quickly denied by Abrams.
In a 2011 interview, Matt Reeves gave an update on the status of Cloverfield 2, saying, "Getting the right idea together has been taking a long time." ... "You are going to see it - we just don't know when [laughs] ... At the moment we are talking about the story quite a lot. Drew Goddard, who wrote the original, is going to pen the sequel and JJ Abrams is very much involved. ... However, the three of us have been so busy that getting the right idea together has been taking a long time." When asked if the sequel will be shot in real-time, Reeves stated "You see, that's a difficult part: we want it to be shot like the first but how can you continue that idea successfully for a second time? ... We have a lot of affection for the original and the sequel can't just be the same thing. But that is tricky when you need to have a monster destroying stuff once again."
)
Matt Reeves
Matthew George "Matt" Reeves is an American film writer, director and producer.-Early life:Reeves was born in Rockville Centre, New York, and raised in Los Angeles, California. He began making movies at eight years old, directing friends with a wind-up camera. Reeves met and became friends with J.J...
, produced by J. J. Abrams
J. J. Abrams
Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...
and written by Drew Goddard
Drew Goddard
Drew Goddard is an American film and television screenwriter and producer best known for his collaborations with Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams .Goddard joined the crew of Lost as a freelance writer for the first season in 2004...
.
The film follows six young New Yorkers attending a going-away party on the night that a gigantic monster
Clover (creature)
Clover is the production name given to the giant, fictional monster that appears in the 2008 film Cloverfield. The creature was originally conceived by producer J. J. Abrams and was designed by artist Neville Page. In the film, the monster is never named; the name "Cloverfield" is only given to the...
attacks the city. First publicized in a teaser trailer in screenings of Transformers, the film was released on January 17 in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, on January 18 in North America, on January 24 in South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
, on January 25 in Taiwan
Republic of China
The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...
, on January 31 in Germany and on February 1 in the United Kingdom, Ireland and in Italy. In Japan, the film was released on April 5.
VFX
Visual effects
Visual effects are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects involve the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or...
and CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
were performed by effects studios Double Negative
Double Negative (VFX)
Double Negative is a British full-service visual effects/computer animation company located in Soho, London. The company was set up in 1998 with a team of 30 staff and has since grown to over 900 staff, making it one of Europe's largest provider of visual effects for film.In 2009, Double Negative...
and Tippett Studio
Tippett Studio
Tippett Studio is a visual effects company specializing in computer-generated imagery for movies and television commercials. Phil Tippett founded the studio in 1984, which employs effects artists who work with his partners Jules Roman and Craig Hayes....
.
Plot
The film is presented as found footageFound footage
Found footage is a filmmaking term which describes a method of compiling films partly or entirely of footage which has not been created by the filmmaker, and changing its meaning by placing it in a new context. It should not be mistaken for documentary or compilation films. It is also not to be...
from a personal video camera recovered by the United States Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
. A disclaimer text states that the footage is of a case designated "Cloverfield" and was found in the area "formerly known as Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
". The video consists chiefly of segments taped the night of Friday, May 22 and the morning of Saturday, May 23. The newer segments were taped over older video that is visible occasionally.
The first video segment opens when Rob wakes up on the morning of Monday, April 27 having slept with Beth, a previously platonic
Platonic love
Platonic love is a chaste and strong type of love that is non-sexual.-Amor Platonicus:The term amor platonicus was coined as early as the 15th century by the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino. Platonic love in this original sense of the term is examined in Plato's dialogue the Symposium, which has...
friend. They make plans to go to Coney Island
Coney Island
Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....
that day. The footage suddenly cuts to May 22, when Rob's brother Jason and his girlfriend Lily prepare a farewell party for Rob who will be moving to Japan. At the party, their friend Hud uses a camera to film testimonials, and flirts unsuccessfully with Marlena, another party guest. After Beth leaves the party following an argument with Rob, an apparent earthquake strikes, and the city suffers a brief power outage.
The local news reports that an oil tanker
Oil tanker
An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a merchant ship designed for the bulk transport of oil. There are two basic types of oil tankers: the crude tanker and the product tanker. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries...
has capsized near Liberty Island
Liberty Island
Liberty Island is a small uninhabited island in New York Harbor in the United States, best known as the location of the Statue of Liberty. Though so called since the turn of the century, the name did not become official until 1956. In 1937, by proclamation 2250, President Franklin D...
. Then another explosion causes the party-goers to evacuate the building. They see the head of the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
crash nearby in the street, with several stunning scratch and bite marks. Hud records what appears to be a giant hand of a creature several blocks away. Rob, Jason, Lily, Hud and Marlena, along with a crowd of other civilians, attempt to escape Manhattan on the Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River...
. A gigantic tail comes down and destroys the center span of the bridge, killing Jason and others. The survivors flee back to Manhattan as the bridge collapses.
Rob discovers that Beth sent him a message and goes to an electronics store trying to get new batteries for his phone. Hud watches the news, which shows the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
's 42nd Infantry Division attacking the monster and smaller "parasite" creatures falling off its body. Several of these creatures are seen attacking soldiers and civilians on the ground. Once Rob gets new batteries, he listens to Beth's message saying she is trapped in her apartment and unable to move.
Going against the crowd, Rob, Hud, Lily, and Marlena venture to Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan, or simply Midtown, is an area of Manhattan, New York City home to world-famous commercial zones such as Rockefeller Center, Broadway, and Times Square...
to rescue Beth. They are soon caught in a crossfire between the monster and the military, and escape into a subway station. They walk through the subway tunnels but are attacked by several of the "parasite" creatures. Hud is nearly dragged away, and in the process of saving him, Marlena is bitten by one of them. They escape to a small room and come across a Bloomingdale's
Bloomingdale's
Bloomingdale's is an American department store owned by Macy's, Inc. .Bloomingdale's started in 1861 when brothers Joseph and Lyman G. Bloomingdale started selling hoop-skirts in their Ladies Notions' Shop on Manhattan's Lower East Side...
department store where they are met by a squad of soldiers who have set up a field hospital and command center in the store. Marlena starts feeling sick. One of the personal notices this and the bite and has her taken back behind a large curtain where we can see her silhouette explode. One of the military leaders takes them in a back hall and lets them leave, but tells them when the last evacuation helicopter will depart before the military executes its "Hammer Down Protocol".
The group finds that Beth's building has collapsed against another building. They rescue Beth, who was trapped and impaled on a piece of rebar
Rebar
A rebar , also known as reinforcing steel, reinforcement steel, rerod, or a deformed bar, is a common steel bar, and is commonly used as a tensioning device in reinforced concrete and reinforced masonry structures holding the concrete in compression...
. The four try to make their way to the evacuation site, where they encounter the monster once more over Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal —often incorrectly called Grand Central Station, or shortened to simply Grand Central—is a terminal station at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States...
. Lily is raced into one departing U.S. Marine Corps helicopter. Moments later, Rob, Beth and Hud are taken away in a second helicopter and witness a U.S. Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
B-2 Spirit
B-2 Spirit
The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit is an American heavy bomber with low observable stealth technology designed to penetrate dense anti-aircraft defenses and deploy both conventional and nuclear weapons. The bomber has a crew of two and can drop up to eighty -class JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen ...
bomb the monster. The monster falls. Just as Hud declares victory, the monster lunges and attacks the helicopter, causing it to crash into Central Park.
Rob and Beth grab the camera and take shelter under Greyshot Arch in Central Park as air raid sirens begin to blare and bombing starts. Rob and Beth take turns leaving their last testimonies of the day, which Rob mentions as Saturday, May 23. The bridge crumbles and debris covers the camera. The film then cuts to the footage of Rob and Beth's Coney Island date on April 27. In the distance, unnoticed by Rob and Beth, a large object falls into the ocean.
Cast
- Michael Stahl-DavidMichael Stahl-DavidMichael Stahl-David is an American actor, perhaps best known for his television role as Sean Donnelly on The Black Donnellys and his lead role in the J. J. Abrams-produced film Cloverfield.-Early life:...
as Robert "Rob" Hawkins - Mike VogelMike VogelMichael James "Mike" Vogel is an American actor and former fashion model. Vogel began acting in 2001, and has since appeared in several films and series, including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Grind, Poseidon, and Cloverfield.-Early life:Vogel was born in...
as Jason Hawkins - T. J. MillerT. J. MillerTodd Joseph Miller , better known as T. J. Miller, is an American actor and stand-up comedian.-Life and career:Miller was born in Denver, Colorado. He attended East High School. Miller then attended the George Washington University in Washington, D.C...
as Hudson "Hud" Platt - Odette YustmanOdette YustmanOdette Juliette Annable , better known by her birth name Odette Yustman, is an American actress.-Early life:...
as Elizabeth "Beth" McIntyre - Jessica LucasJessica LucasJessica Lucas is a Canadian actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles in Melrose Place, She's the Man and Cloverfield.-Early life:...
as Lily Ford - Lizzy CaplanLizzy CaplanElizabeth Anne "Lizzy" Caplan is an American actress. In film, she is best known for her roles as Janis Ian in Mean Girls, Marlena Diamond in Cloverfield, and April in Hot Tub Time Machine...
as Marlena Diamond - Ben FeldmanBen Feldman (actor)Ben Feldman is an American television and film actor. He has done stage acting, including the Broadway play The Graduate along with Alicia Silverstone and Kathleen Turner. He also played a leading character in The Perfect Man and portrayed Fran Drescher's son on the television series Living with...
as Travis - Billy BrownBilly Brown- People :*Billy Brown , English professional footballer*Billy Brown , football player who played as a right half, right back, outside right for Luton Town, Huddersfied Town, Brentford and Leyton Orient in the Football League*Billy Brown , Scottish football player and coach*Billy Brown - People...
as Staff Sgt.Pryce
To prevent the leaking of plot information, instead of auditioning the actors with scenes from the film, scripts from Abrams' previous productions were used, such as television series Alias
Alias (TV series)
Alias is an American action television series created by J. J. Abrams which was broadcast on ABC for five seasons, from September 30, 2001 to May 22, 2006...
and Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
. Some scenes were also written specifically for the audition process, not intended for use in the film. Despite not being told the premise of the film, Lizzy Caplan stated that she accepted a role in Cloverfield solely because she was a fan of the Abrams-produced television series Lost (in which her former Related co-star Kiele Sanchez
Kiele Sanchez
Kiele Michelle Sanchez is an American actress who stars in the A&E Network drama The Glades. Previously she starred as the second-eldest Sorelli sister, Anne, a therapist in her mid-twenties, in The WB's comedic ensemble drama, Related. She was cast as a co-star in the third season of the ABC...
was a recurring character), and her experience of discovering its true nature initially caused her to state that she would not sign on for a film in the future "without knowing full well what it is". She indicated that her character was a sarcastic outsider, and that her role, was "physically demanding". Ryan Key
Ryan Key
Ryan Key is an American rock musician. He is best known for being the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of the American pop punk band Yellowcard, and one of the two lead singers in his side project Big If.-Early life:...
, the guitarist and vocalist for pop punk
Pop punk
Pop punk is a fusion music genre that combines elements of punk rock with pop music, to varying degrees. Allmusic describes the genre as a strand of alternative rock, which typically merges pop melodies with speedy punk tempos, chord changes and loud guitars...
band Yellowcard
Yellowcard
Yellowcard is an American pop punk/alternative rock band formed in Jacksonville, Florida in 1997, and based in Los Angeles, California since 2000. Their music features the use of a violin, unusual for the genre...
, made a small appearance in the film.
Development
J. J. Abrams
Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...
thought up a new monster after he and his son visited a toy store in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
while promoting Mission: Impossible III
Mission: Impossible III
Mission: Impossible III is a 2006 spy film, the third based on the spy-themed television series Mission: Impossible starring Tom Cruise who reprises his role of IMF agent Ethan Hunt....
. He explained, "We saw all these Godzilla
Godzilla
is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...
toys, and I thought, we need our own American monster, and not like King Kong
King Kong
King Kong is a fictional character, a giant movie monster resembling a gorilla, that has appeared in several movies since 1933. These include the groundbreaking 1933 movie, the film remakes of 1976 and 2005, as well as various sequels of the first two films...
. I love King Kong. King Kong is adorable. And Godzilla is a charming monster. We love Godzilla. But I wanted something that was just insane, and intense." There are three still frames in "pre-recorded" sequences, one from the movie Them! one from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Eugène Lourié and stars Paul Christian, Paula Raymond and Cecil Kellaway with visual effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film is about an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle that unfreezes a hibernating fictional dinosaur, a...
and one from King Kong - these three movies are also cited in the credits.
In February 2007, Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
secretly greenlit
Greenlight
To green-light a project is to give permission or a go ahead to move forward with a project. In the context of the movie and TV businesses, to green-light something is to formally approve its production finance, thereby allowing the project to move forward from the development phase to...
Cloverfield, to be produced by Abrams, directed by Matt Reeves
Matt Reeves
Matthew George "Matt" Reeves is an American film writer, director and producer.-Early life:Reeves was born in Rockville Centre, New York, and raised in Los Angeles, California. He began making movies at eight years old, directing friends with a wind-up camera. Reeves met and became friends with J.J...
and written by Drew Goddard
Drew Goddard
Drew Goddard is an American film and television screenwriter and producer best known for his collaborations with Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams .Goddard joined the crew of Lost as a freelance writer for the first season in 2004...
. The project was produced by Abrams' company, Bad Robot Productions
Bad Robot Productions
Bad Robot Productions is an American film and television production company owned by J. J. Abrams. It is responsible for the television series Alias, Lost, What About Brian, Fringe, Six Degrees, Undercovers, Person of Interest and the feature length films Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol , ...
. The visual effects producer was Chantal Feghali.
The severed 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. According to Reeves, "It's an incredibly provocative image. And that was the source that inspired producer J. J. Abrams to say, 'Now this would be an interesting idea for a movie'."
Title
The film was initially titled Cloverfield; however, this changed throughout production before it was finalized as the original title. Matt Reeves explained that the title was changed frequently due to the hype caused by the teaser trailer. "That excitement spread to such a degree that we suddenly couldn't use the name anymore. So we started using all these names like Slusho and Cheese. And people always found out what we were doing!" The director said that "Cloverfield" was the government's case designation for the events caused by the monster, comparing the titling to that of the Manhattan ProjectManhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
. "And it's not a project per se. It's the way that this case has been designated. That's why that is on the trailer, and it becomes clearer in the film. It's how they refer to this phenomenon [or] this case", said the director. The film's final title, Cloverfield, is the name of the exit Abrams takes to his Santa Monica
Santa Mônica
Santa Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
office. In turn, the road used to lead to the Santa Monica Airport
Santa Monica Airport
Santa Monica Airport , also known as Santa Monica Municipal Airport, is a general aviation airport located largely in Santa Monica, California, United States. The airport is located about from the Pacific Ocean and north of LAX...
, which originally bore the name Clover Field.
One final title, Greyshot, was proposed before the movie was officially titled Cloverfield. The name Greyshot is taken from the archway that the two survivors take shelter under at the end of the movie. Director Matt Reeves said that it was decided not to change the title to Greyshot because the film was already so well known as Cloverfield.
The film received a subtitle in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, where it was released as . The subtitle "Destroyer" was chosen by Abrams and was translated into Japanese as by Paramount Japan at his request. The subtitle was chosen for the manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
spinoff, Cloverfield/Kishin
Cloverfield/Kishin
is a manga and cross-media tie-in to the 2008 film Cloverfield. It was published once a month on Kadokawa Shoten's website and consists of four chapters. There are English translations for the story, but only on fansites and only for the first three chapters...
, released exclusively in Japan.
Filming
The casting process was carried out in secret, with no script being sent out to candidates. With production estimated to have a budget of $30 million, filming began in mid-June 2007 in New York. One cast member indicated that the film would look like it cost $150 million, despite producers not casting recognizable and expensive actors. Filmmakers used the Panasonic HVX200 for most of the interior scenes, and the Sony CineAltaCineAlta
Sony's CineAlta 24P HD Cameras are a series of professional digital video cameras that offer many of the same features of a 35mm motion picture film camera.- Concept :...
F23 high-definition video
High-definition video
High-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels or 1,920×1,080 pixels...
camera to film nearly all of the New York exterior scenes. Filming took place on Coney Island
Coney Island
Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....
, with scenes shot at Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park
Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park
Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park is a small amusement pier located at Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City featuring mostly family and children's rides with a few adult rides. Their main attraction is the Wonder Wheel, a hundred and fifty foot eccentric Ferris wheel. This wheel was built in 1920...
and the B&B Carousel. The scenes of tanks firing at the creature while the main characters hide in a stairwell were filmed on Hennesy Street on Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, CA. Some interior shots were filmed on a soundstage at Downey, California
Downey, California
Downey is a city located in southeast Los Angeles County, California, United States, southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The city is best known as the birthplace of the Apollo space program, and is the city where folk singer Karen Carpenter lived and died...
, Bloomingdale's in the movie was actually filmed in an emptied Robinsons-May
Robinsons-May
Robinsons-May was a chain of department stores operating in Southern California, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada, previously with headquarters in North Hollywood, California...
store that was under reconstruction in Arcadia, California
Arcadia, California
Arcadia is an affluent city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, and located approximately northeast of downtown Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley and at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains....
, and the outside scenes of Sephora
Sephora
Sephora is a chain of cosmetics stores founded in France in 1970 and acquired by Paris-based conglomerate LVMH in 1997. The Sephora chain includes more than 750 stores in 17 countries...
and the electronics store were filmed in Downtown Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
.
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
style, to look like it was filmed with one hand-held camera, including jump cut
Jump cut
A jump cut is a cut in film editing and vloging in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way...
s similar to ones found in home movies
Home movies
A home movie is part of the motion picture filmmaking process made by amateurs, often for viewing by family and friends. When the hobby began, home movies were produced on photographic film, but accessibility of video production with video cameras and low cost data storage devices has made the...
. T. J. Miller
T. J. Miller
Todd Joseph Miller , better known as T. J. Miller, is an American actor and stand-up comedian.-Life and career:Miller was born in Denver, Colorado. He attended East High School. Miller then attended the George Washington University in Washington, D.C...
, who plays Hud, has said in various interviews that he filmed a third of the movie and almost half of it made it into the film. Director Matt Reeves described the presentation, "We wanted this to be as if someone found a Handicam, took out the tape and put it in the player to watch it. What you're watching is a home movie that then turns into something else." Reeves explained that the pedestrians documenting the severed head of the Statue of Liberty with the camera phones was reflective of the contemporary period. According to him: "Cloverfield very much speaks to the fear and anxieties of our time, how we live our lives. Constantly documenting things and putting them up on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, sending people videos through e-mail – we felt it was very applicable to the way people feel now."
Several of the filmmakers are heard but not seen in the film. The man yelling "Oh my God!" repeatedly when the head of the Statue of Liberty lands in the street is producer Bryan Burk
Bryan Burk
Bryan Burk is an American film and television producer, as well as an occasional screenwriter.A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Bryan Burk began his career working with producers Brad Weston at Columbia Pictures, Ned Tanen at Sony Pictures and John Davis at FOX...
, and director Matt Reeves voiced the whispered radio broadcast at the end of the credits.
After viewing a cut of the film, Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
suggested giving the audience a hint at the fate of the monster during the climax, which resulted in the addition of a countdown overheard on the helicopter's radio and the sounding of air raid sirens to signal the forthcoming Hammerdown bombing.
Creature design
Visual main effects supervisor Nick Tom and Phil Tippett'sPhil Tippett
Phil Tippett is a movie director and an award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design and character animation.-Early career:...
"Tippett Studio" were enlisted to develop the visual effects for Cloverfield. Because the visual effects were incorporated after filming, cast members had to react to a non-existent creature during scenes, only being familiar with early conceptual renderings of the beast. Artist Neville Page designed the monster, thoroughly creating a biological rationale for the creature, even if many of his ideas like "elongated, and articulated external esophagus" would not show up on screen. The key idea behind the monster was that he was an immature creature suffering from "separation anxiety
Separation anxiety disorder
Separation anxiety disorder is a psychological condition in which an individual experiences excessive anxiety regarding separation from home or from people to whom the individual has a strong emotional attachment...
". This recalls real-life elephants who get frightened and lash out at the circus, because the director felt "there's nothing scarier than something huge that's spooked".
Marketing
Before the film's release, Paramount PicturesParamount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
carried out a viral marketing
Viral marketing
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...
campaign to promote the film which included viral tie-ins similar to Lost Experience
Lost Experience
The Lost Experience was an alternate reality game that was part of the American television drama Lost. The game was developed by ABC in the United States, Channel 4 in the UK, and Channel 7 in Australia. It was written by Jordan Rosenberg and created by the agency Hi-ReS!...
. Filmmakers decided to create a teaser trailer that would be a surprise in the light of commonplace media saturation, which they put together during the preparation stage of the production process. The teaser was then used as a basis for the film itself. Paramount Pictures encouraged the teaser to be released without a title attached, and the Motion Picture Association of America
Motion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
approved the move. 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. A second trailer was released on November 16, 2007 which was attached to Beowulf
Beowulf (2007 film)
Beowulf is a 2007 American animated fantasy film written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary inspired by the Old English epic poem of the same name. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film was created through a motion capture process similar to the technique he used in The Polar Express...
, confirming the title.
The studio had kept knowledge of the project secret from the online community, a cited rarity due to the presence of scoopers
Scoop (term)
Scoop is an informal term used in journalism. The word connotes originality, importance, surprise or excitement, secrecy and exclusivity.Stories likely considered to be scoops are important news, likely to interest or concern many people. A scoop is typically a new story, or a new aspect to an...
that follow upcoming films. The controlled release of information on the film has been observed as a risky strategy, which could succeed like The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur footage. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company. The film relates the story of three student filmmakers The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur...
(1999) or disappoint like Snakes on a Plane
Snakes on a Plane
Snakes on a Plane is a 2006 American horror-action-thriller film directed by David R. Ellis and starring Samuel L. Jackson. It was released by New Line Cinema on August 18, 2006 in North America...
(2006), the latter of which had generated online hype but failed to attract large audiences.
Pre-release plot speculation
The sudden appearance of the untitled trailer for Cloverfield fueled media speculation over the film's plot. USA TodayUSA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
reported the possibilities of the film being based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
, a live-action adaptation of Voltron
Voltron
Voltron is the titular super robot of an anime series that features a team of young pilots, known as the Voltron Force. The team’s individual vehicles join together to form the giant super robot, with which they defend the galaxy from evil...
(based on a mis-interpretation of the trailer's line "It's alive!" as "It's a lion!"), a new film about Godzilla
Godzilla
is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...
, or a spin-off of the TV show Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
. The Star Ledger also reported the possibility of the film being based on Lovecraft lore or Godzilla. The Guardian reported the possibility of a Lost spin-off, while Time Out reported that the film was about an alien called "The Parasite". IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
also backed the possibility of that premise, with The Parasite rumored to be a working title for the film. Online, Slusho and Colossus had been discussed as other possible titles, as well as Monstrous, although this was dispelled by Abrams at ComicCon. Entertainment Weekly also disputed reports that the film would be about a parasite or a colossal Asian robot such as Voltron.
Visitors of the website Ain't It Cool News
Ain't It Cool News
Ain't It Cool News is a website founded and run by Harry Knowles, dedicated to news, rumors and reviews of upcoming and currently playing films and television projects, with an emphasis on science fiction, fantasy, horror, comic-book and action genres...
have pointed out 9/11
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
allusions based on the destruction in New York City such as the decapitated Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
. The film has also drawn alternate reality game
Alternate reality game
An alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions....
enthusiasts that have followed other viral marketing campaigns like those set up for the TV series Lost, the video games Halo 2
Halo 2
Halo 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox video game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved...
and Halo 3
Halo 3
Halo 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise, the game concludes the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2...
. Members of the forums at argn.com and unfiction.com have investigated the background of the film, with the "1-18-08" section at Unfiction generating over 7,700 posts in August 2007. The members have studied photographs on the film's official site, potentially related MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
profiles, and the Comic-Con teaser poster for the film. A popular piece of fan art
Fan art
Fan art or fanart is artwork that is based on a character, costume, collage, item, or story that was created by someone other than the artist, such as a fan, from which the word is derived from. The term, while it can apply to art done by fans of characters from books, is usually used to refer to...
posited that the monster was a mutated Humpback Whale
Humpback Whale
The humpback whale is a species of baleen whale. One of the larger rorqual species, adults range in length from and weigh approximately . The humpback has a distinctive body shape, with unusually long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. It is an acrobatic animal, often breaching and slapping the...
.
Viral tie-ins
J. J. Abrams
Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...
stated that, while a number of websites were being developed to market the film, the only official site that had been found was 1-18-08.com. At the site, a collection of time-coded photos are provided to visitors to piece together a series of events and interpret their meanings. The pictures can also be flipped over – by repeatedly and rapidly moving the mouse side to side. Also, while on 1-18-08.com, if the page is left open long enough, the monster's roar can be heard. Eventually, www.cloverfieldmovie.com was created. The site provided both a trailer and a number, 33287, which, when texted from a mobile phone, provided a ringtone of the monster's roar and a wallpaper of a decimated Manhattan. This eventually turns out to be a Paramount number (people later received material on Iron Man
Iron Man (film)
Iron Man is a 2008 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Directed by Jon Favreau, the film stars Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark, an industrialist and master engineer who builds a powered exoskeleton and becomes the technologically advanced superhero, Iron...
, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda is a 2008 American computer-animated action comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures...
, and The Love Guru
The Love Guru
The Love Guru is a 2008 comedy film, directed by Marco Schnabel and starring Mike Myers and Jessica Alba along with Romany Malco and Justin Timberlake. In addition to starring in the film, Myers wrote The Love Guru with Graham Gordy and produced it with Gary Barber. The film was released by...
).
The drink Slusho! served as part of the viral marketing
Viral marketing
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...
campaign. The drink had already appeared in producer Abrams' previous creation, the TV series Alias
Alias (TV series)
Alias is an American action television series created by J. J. Abrams which was broadcast on ABC for five seasons, from September 30, 2001 to May 22, 2006...
. Viral websites for Slusho! and a Japanese drilling company named were launched to add to the mythology of Cloverfield. A building bearing the company logo for Tagruato can also be seen in the TV spot of the eleventh Star Trek film, another Abrams production. When Cloverfield was hosted at Comic-Con 2007, gray Slusho! T-shirts were distributed to attendees. Fans who had registered at the Slusho! website for Cloverfield received e-mails of fictional sonar
Sonar
Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels...
images before the film's release that showed a deep-sea creature heading toward Manhattan.
Producer Bryan Burk explained the viral tie-in, "It was all done in conjunction with the studio... The whole experience in making this movie is very reminiscent of how we did Lost
Lost Experience
The Lost Experience was an alternate reality game that was part of the American television drama Lost. The game was developed by ABC in the United States, Channel 4 in the UK, and Channel 7 in Australia. It was written by Jordan Rosenberg and created by the agency Hi-ReS!...
." 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 of the film and lead, also, to the ideas in the film. And there's this weird way where you can go see the movie and it's one experience... But there's also this other place where you can get engaged where there's this 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 a way, a prism and they're another way of looking at the same thing. To us, it's just another exciting aspect of the storytelling."
Merchandise
A four-installment prequel mangaManga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
series by Yoshiki Togawa titled was released by Japanese publisher Kadokawa Shoten
Kadokawa Shoten
is a well-known Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. Kadokawa has published both manga novels and magazines, such as Newtype magazine...
. The story focuses on a Japanese high school student named Kishin Aiba, who somehow bears a connection to the monster.
Based on the successful opening weekend of Cloverfield in theaters, Hasbro
Hasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
began accepting orders for a 14 inches (35.6 cm) collectible toy figure of the monster with authentic sound and its parasites that were shipped to fans by December 24, 2008.
Music and sound
Due to its presentation as footage from a consumer digital recorder, Cloverfield has no film scoreFilm score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
, with the exception of the composition "Roar! (Cloverfield Overture)" by Michael Giacchino
Michael Giacchino
Michael Giacchino is an American composer who has composed scores for movies, television series and video games. Some of his most notable works include the scores to television series such as Lost, Alias and Fringe, games such as the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series, and films such as...
that plays over the end credits. Similarities between "Roar!" and the music of Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube
Akira Ifukube
was a Japanese composer of classical music and film scores, perhaps best known for his work on the soundtracks of the Godzilla movies by Toho.-Biography:...
have been noted, and it has been suggested that Giacchino's overture is a tribute to Ifukube's work, which was confirmed by Matt Reeves
Matt Reeves
Matthew George "Matt" Reeves is an American film writer, director and producer.-Early life:Reeves was born in Rockville Centre, New York, and raised in Los Angeles, California. He began making movies at eight years old, directing friends with a wind-up camera. Reeves met and became friends with J.J...
in the DVD's commentary track. The sound track was supervised by William Files and Douglas Murray at Skywalker Sound
Skywalker Sound
Skywalker Sound is the sound effects, sound editing, sound design, sound mixing and music recording division of George Lucas' Lucas Digital motion picture group. Its main facilities are located in Lucas Valley, near Nicasio, California...
.
Rob's Party Mix or Cloverfield Mix is a collection of the music played in the opening party sequences of the film that was released exclusively on Apple's iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
store on January 22, 2008 in lieu of a traditional soundtrack album. The Cloverfield score, "Roar! (Cloverfield Overture)" by Michael Giacchino that plays over the end credits is not featured on the album, as it is the mixtape
Mixtape
A Mix Tape or Mixed Tape is a compilation of songs recorded in a specific order, traditionally onto an audio Compact Cassette.A Mix Tape, which usually reflects the musical tastes of its compiler, can range from a casually selected list of favorite songs, to a conceptual mix of songs linked by a...
played at the party and is not the official soundtrack of the film. This album was distributed to guests at a Cloverfield premiere party held at the Dark Room in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
on January 17, 2008.
A complete soundtrack release of all the music in the film, including Giacchino's "Roar!" end title piece, has now also been released exclusively on iTunes; it has not been officially released in retail stores. A CD entitled Rob's Party Mix comes packaged in a special edition of Cloverfield made available for sale in Canadian Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
stores beginning on April 22, 2008.
Reception
Cloverfield received strongly positive reviews; as of October 29, 2011, review aggregate website Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reported that 77% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 192 reviews. According to Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, the film has received an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 64, based on 37 reviews. And on Spill.com
Spill.com
Spill.com is an award-winning video game and movie review, discussion, and news website created by cartoonist and animator Korey Coleman. It is the continuation of the 9 year old Austin, Texas based Public-access television cable TV show called The Reel Deal...
, it got their highest rating of 'Better Than Sex!'.
Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle calls the film "the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in my adult moviegoing life [...] a pure-blood, grade A, exhilarating monster movie." He cites Matt Reeves
Matt Reeves
Matthew George "Matt" Reeves is an American film writer, director and producer.-Early life:Reeves was born in Rockville Centre, New York, and raised in Los Angeles, California. He began making movies at eight years old, directing friends with a wind-up camera. Reeves met and became friends with J.J...
' direction, the "whip-smart, stylistically invisible" script and the "nearly subconscious
Subconscious
The term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a definition-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings....
evocation of our current paranoid, terror
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
-phobic times" as the keys to the film's success, saying that telling the story through the lens of one character's camera "works fantastically well". Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
called it "chillingly effective", praising the effects and the film's "claustrophobic intensity". He said that though the characters "aren't particularly interesting or developed", there was "something refreshing about a monster movie that isn't filled with the usual suspects". Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
said that the film was "surreptitiously subversive, [a] stylistically clever little gem", and that while the characters were "vapid, twenty-something nincompoops" and the acting "appropriately unmemorable", the decision to tell the story through amateur footage was "brilliant". Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
in the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
wrote that the film is "pretty scary at times" and cites "unmistakable evocations of 9/11". He concludes that "all in all, it is an effective film, deploying its special effects well and never breaking the illusion that it is all happening as we see it".
Todd McCarthy of Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
called the film an "old-fashioned monster movie dressed up in trendy new threads", praising the special effects, "nihilistic attitude" and "post-9/11 anxiety overlay", but said, "In the end, [it's] not much different from all the marauding creature features that have come before it". Scott Foundas of LA Weekly
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
was critical of the film's use of scenes reminiscent of the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and called it "cheap and opportunistic". He suggested that the film was engaging in "stealth" attempts at social commentary and compared this unfavorably to the films of Don Siegel
Don Siegel
Donald Siegel was an influential American film director and producer. His name variously appeared in the credits of his films as both Don Siegel and Donald Siegel.-Early life:...
, George A. Romero
George A. Romero
George Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...
and Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
, saying, "Where those filmmakers all had something meaningful to say about the state of the world and [...] human nature, Abrams doesn't have much to say about anything". Manohla Dargis in the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called the allusions "tacky", saying, "[The images] may make you think of the attack, and you may curse the filmmakers for their vulgarity, insensitivity or lack of imagination", but that "the film is too dumb to offend anything except your intelligence". She concludes that the film "works as a showcase for impressively realistic-looking special effects, a realism that fails to extend to the scurrying humans whose fates
Destiny
Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...
are meant to invoke pity and fear but instead inspire yawns and contempt." Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
calls the film "badly constructed, humorless and emotionally sadistic", and sums up by saying that the film "takes the trauma
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...
of 9/11 and turns it into just another random spectacle at which to point and shoot". Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
warned that the viewer may feel "queasy" at the references to September 11, but that "other sequences [...] carry a real jolt" and that such tactics were "crude, but undeniably gripping". He called the film "dumb", but "quick and dirty and effectively brusque", concluding that despite it being "a harsher, more demographically calculating brand of fun", he enjoyed the film. Bruce Paterson of Cinephilia described the film as "a successful experiment in style but not necessarily a successful story for those who want dramatic closure".
Cloverfield appeared on some critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008. Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazine named it the fifth best film of 2008. The prestigious French film journal Cahiers du Cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
named the film as the third best of 2008. Bloody Disgusting
Bloody Disgusting
Bloody Disgusting is a website that covers horror movies with reviews, interviews and news. It is currently run by Brad Miska, and Tom Owen. According to one source, the site has 1.5 million unique visitors and 20 million page views each month. It is widely considered to be the "world's most...
ranked the film number twenty in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article calling the film "A brilliant conceit, to be sure, backed by a genius early marketing campaign that followed the less-is-more philosophy to tantalizing effect... much like Blair Witch
The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur footage. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company. The film relates the story of three student filmmakers The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur...
nearly ten years earlier, Cloverfield helped prove, particularly in its first half hour, that what you don’t see can be the scariest thing of all."
The movie was nominated for four awards: It was nominated for two Saturn Award
Saturn Award
The Saturn Award is an award presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films to honor the top works in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, television, and home video. The Saturn Awards were devised by Dr. Donald A. Reed in 1972, who felt that films within...
s for "Best supporting actress (Lizzy Caplan)" and "Best science fiction film". It was nominated for two Golden Trailer Awards for "Best Thriller for Trailer" and "Most original trailer". The film went on to win a Saturn Award for "Best science fiction film". It was also ranked #12 on Bravo's 13 Scarier Movie Moments.
Shaky camerawork
Shaky camera
Shaky camera, shaky cam, hand-held camera or free camera is a cinematographic technique where stable-image techniques are purposely dispensed with. The camera is held in the hand, or given the appearance of being hand-held, and in many cases shots are limited to what one photographer could have...
style of cinematography, dubbed "La Shakily Queasy-Cam" by Roger Ebert, caused some viewers (particularly in darkened movie theaters) to experience motion sickness, including nausea
Nausea
Nausea , is a sensation of unease and discomfort in the upper stomach with an involuntary urge to vomit. It often, but not always, precedes vomiting...
and a temporary loss of balance. Audience members prone to migraines have cited the film as a trigger. Some theaters showing the film, such as AMC Theatres
AMC Theatres
AMC Theatres , officially known as AMC Entertainment, Inc., is the second largest movie theater chain in North America with 5,325 screens, second only to Regal Entertainment Group, and one of the United States's four national cinema chains AMC Theatres (American Multi-Cinema), officially known as...
, provided posted and verbal warnings, informing viewers about the filming style of Cloverfield while other theatres like Pacific Theatres
Pacific Theatres
Pacific Theatres is a chain of movie theaters in the Los Angeles area of California. Pacific Theatres is owned by Decurion Corporation which also owns ArcLight Cinema Company .- Developments : The company has some 300 movie screens in California...
just verbally warned guests in detail at the box office about experiencing motion sickness upon viewing the film and what to do if they had to step out and vomit.
The cinematography influences the encoding
Encoder
An encoder is a device, circuit, transducer, software program, algorithm or person that converts information from one format or code to another, for the purposes of standardization, speed, secrecy, security, or saving space by shrinking size.-Media:...
of the video and can cause compression artifact
Compression artifact
A compression artifact is a noticeable distortion of media caused by the application of lossy data compression....
s to fast motion across the field of view.
Home media release
The DVD was released on April 22, 2008, in two versions: the standard single-disc edition and an exclusive "steelSteel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
-book" special edition that was sold at Suncoast
Suncoast Motion Picture Company
Suncoast Motion Picture Company is an American chain of retail stores specializing in recorded videos, particularly movies but also carried television series. The stores have sold them in the VHS, Laser Disk, DVD, HD, and Blu-ray formats. The stores also carry various other items, including...
and FYE
Fyé
Fyé is a commune in the Sarthe department in the region of Pays-de-la-Loire in north-western France.-References:*...
retailers in the US and Future Shop
Future Shop
Future Shop is Canada's largest consumer electronics retailer. Future Shop currently operates a total of 146 stores across all of Canada's provinces as of December 2008....
in Canada. Other store exclusives include an exclusive bonus disc titled "T.J. Miller's Video Diary" with the DVD at all Best Buy
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...
retailers, an exclusive mix CD titled "Rob's Goin' to Japan Party Mix" with the DVD at all Target
Target Corporation
Target Corporation, doing business as Target, is an American retailing company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the second-largest discount retailer in the United States, behind Walmart. The company is ranked at number 33 on the Fortune 500 and is a component of the Standard & Poor's...
and Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
retailers and an exclusive ringtone with the DVD at all Kmart
Kmart
Kmart, sometimes styled as "K-Mart," is a chain of discount department stores. The chain acquired Sears in 2005, forming a new corporation under the name Sears Holdings Corporation. The company was founded in 1962 and is the third largest discount store chain in the world, behind Wal-Mart and...
and Sears retailers. Borders
Borders Group
Borders Group, Inc. was an international book and music retailer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The company employed approximately 19,500 throughout the U.S., primarily in its Borders and Waldenbooks stores....
also has an exclusive booklet encased with their DVD.
The Region 2
DVD region code
DVD region codes are a digital-rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region...
DVD was released on June 9 in both one-disc and two-disc editions. The limited steelbook edition is only available from HMV
HMV
His Master's Voice is a trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone...
, while Play.com
Play.com
Play Ltd., trading as Play.com, is a Jersey-based online retailer of DVDs, CDs, books, gadgets, video games, DRM-free MP3 downloads, and other electronic products, as well as clothes and accessories. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Rakuten Group....
offers exclusive cover artwork. The HMV-exclusive steelbook contains two discs.
The DVD includes two alternative endings, which vary only slightly. The first alternative ending shows Rob and Beth exiting the Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue station instead of on the Ferris wheel and features different sirens in the background as Rob talks to the camera. In the second alternative ending, just after the final explosion, Beth can be heard screaming "Rob!", followed by a very brief clip of an unknown person looking at the camera (in the commentary, Matt Reeves said that it was one of the crew members) and brushing rubble off the lens. The film then ends with the original final clip of Rob and Beth on their Coney Island
Coney Island
Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....
date recording themselves on the ferris wheel as the camera tape runs out, with two differences: there is no timestamp
Timestamp
A timestamp is a sequence of characters, denoting the date or time at which a certain event occurred. A timestamp is the time at which an event is recorded by a computer, not the time of the event itself...
in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, and there is an additional beeping tone indicating the end of the tape.
A Blu-ray
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
edition was released on June 3, 2008. It includes a "Special Investigation Mode," as well as all the bonus features of the 2-disc DVD in HD.
Sequel
At the premiere of the film, Matt Reeves talked about possibilities of how a sequel will turn out if the film succeeds. According to Reeves, "While we were on set making the film we talked about the possibilities and directions of how a sequel can go. The fun of this movie was that it might not have been the only movie being made that night, there might be another movie! In today's day and age of people filming their lives on their camera phones and Handycams, uploading it to YouTubeYouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
... That was kind of exciting thinking about that."
In another interview, Reeves states:
Reeves also points out that the end scene on Coney Island shows something falling into the ocean in the background but didn't give out details. This may have been either the satellite owned by the fictional Japanese media company Tagruato, or the creature itself.
Producers Bryan Burk and J. J. Abrams also announced their thoughts to Entertainment Weekly about possible sequels. According to Bryan Burk, "The creative team has fleshed out an entire backstory which, if we're lucky, we might get to explore in future films".
Abrams stated that he does not want to rush into the development of the sequel because of the first film's success and would rather create a sequel that is true to the previous film.
At the end of January 2008, 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. Reeves now said:
In an interview with Attack of the Show, J. J. Abrams had stated that they might abandon the filming style, stating that he and the rest of the crew would like to try something new.
In September 2008, when asked by CraveOnline
CraveOnline
CraveOnline is a male lifestyle website based in Los Angeles with sales offices in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. The site is owned by media company AtomicOnline, the publishing division of Evolve Media Corp.- History :...
what the current status is on Cloverfield 2, Abrams stated that at this point, they are still discussing it; however, he still feels reluctant to work on a sequel. In the same interview, Abrams said that they were working on something that "could be kind of cool." When asked if it would take place in a different location, Abrams replied by saying that "It would be a totally different kind of thing but it's too early to talk about."
In January 2011, horror film fan site BloodyDisgusting.com stated that a Cloverfield sequel may in fact never happen. They talked to director Reeves and he said that if he can ever get the time to sit down and talk with Drew Goddard and J. J. Abrams about sequel possibilities they will certainly make a sequel, but due to all three's busy schedules Reeves does not see this happening any time soon.
The film Super 8
Super 8 (film)
Super 8 is a 2011 American science fiction action film written and directed by J. J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, and Kyle Chandler and was released on June 10, 2011 in conventional and IMAX theaters...
was initially reported to be either a sequel or prequel to Cloverfield, but this was quickly denied by Abrams.
In a 2011 interview, Matt Reeves gave an update on the status of Cloverfield 2, saying, "Getting the right idea together has been taking a long time." ... "You are going to see it - we just don't know when [laughs] ... At the moment we are talking about the story quite a lot. Drew Goddard, who wrote the original, is going to pen the sequel and JJ Abrams is very much involved. ... However, the three of us have been so busy that getting the right idea together has been taking a long time." When asked if the sequel will be shot in real-time, Reeves stated "You see, that's a difficult part: we want it to be shot like the first but how can you continue that idea successfully for a second time? ... We have a lot of affection for the original and the sequel can't just be the same thing. But that is tricky when you need to have a monster destroying stuff once again."
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