Cloverfield seems to be garnering all the success that the producers were looking for. An unprecedented viral online marketing campaign that piqued our interest just enough, without giving anything away, a unique filming style that we really haven’t seen since The Blair Witch Project (No music or camera tricks and completely first person cinematography), have made Cloverfield the most successful January opener in history, having cleared $40 Million over the weekend, with MLK Monday still to be added to its opening-weekend gross.

There are many reasons that I like this movie and I don’t really want to give a review, but I pretty much agree with Fiona’s review at NathanandFiona.com – though the shaky camera didn’t really bother me at all – I think after the Bourne movies, United 93, etc, I’ve just gotten used to it.

I do want to discuss one thing: but if you haven’t seen the movie please read no further – spoilers ensue, and I REALLY think this movie is best seen with very few prejudices. In the meantime, please GO SEE IT!

Do you think there will be any follow-up projects to this? There were SO many questions about the origin of the monster that were unanswered. Obviously, the film wouldn’t have worked in its faux-camcorder form if they had put much explanation into it - we are really only supposed to know what the protagonists know. But man, it sucks to not know anything…

However there is much speculation already (in typical JJ Abrams form) about the origins of the Cloverfield Monster. There may be some clues in the production itself. I, of course, missed them all, but here are a couple that I found online:

In the FINAL, FINAL scene of the film we see Beth and Rob on a Ferris wheel at Coney Island. He pans the camera to his left to shoot the ocean and if you look to the far right of the screen you will see what appears to be the monster falling out of the sky and into the water.

JJ stated himself that the monster has been down at the bottom of the ocean for thousands of years. What fell into the ocean at the end of the movie was a satellite. If you pay attention to the viral marketing, Taragutu’s site states that one of their satellites fell out of orbit and was lost. This is what woke up the monster from its dormant state.” You be the judge…

In addition, if you stay through to the end of the credits, an audio clip reveals that the monster is not yet dead.

I think I’m going to have to see this one again - Damn you, J.J. Abrams!!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Yada Yada, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.