Minute44 - Dan Schonhaar

Next weekend (the 18th) the much anticipated POV monster movie, Cloverfield hits US screens. From producer JJ Abrams, Cloverfield seems to be breaking new ground when it comes to hype and viral publicity, but will it live up to the, near unattainable, hype it has created for itself?

I first heard about this movie when someone posted the teaser for it on FlashMosh some time around May last year. At that point the film didn’t have a title, just a release date (The American one, 01.18.08), a cloak and dagger strategy that has been employed with the film’s publicity ever since. I was thoroughly intrigued by the teaser trailer and started looking for more info online. I love a good mystery. I couldn’t find much… just a few speculations and the words Cloverfield and Slusho being mentioned, neither in relation to the title. After that I kinda forgot about it until I went to see Transformers and the teaser was shown in the trailers (amidst like 300 Renault Clio ads). Being spurred on by Brahn, I sought more information on the film again. Once again, however, this proved fruitless.

Until a couple of months ago I had no further information about this, other than it’s title having been confirmed as Cloverfield, but then a whole raft of longer trailers and 5 minute clips surfaced, including a full trailer. These still didn’t show much but you did almost catch a glimpse of the “monster”. Posters became more plentiful as well, giving an idea about the nature of the monster. Speculation at this point was at an all-time high with people saying what the story will and won’t be based on. Adam Polselli wrote an enormous blog about his thoughts on the films inspiration. He lists 7 pieces of evidence that suggest Cloverfield is actually based on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. I particularly like the running theme of Slusho, a creation of JJ Abrams which makes appearances in a number of his projects, most notably the hit TV show Alias. It’s rumoured that the company who manufacture Slusho are going to be the ones who awaken the monster in Cloverfield by drilling too deep on an off-shore drilling platform.

That brings us to now. Over the last couple of weeks there has been some astonishing viral publicity spreading for this film. “News reports” in several languages report on the destruction of an off-shore oil rig in the Atlantic and a “Dark shape” beneath it as it is destroyed. English was the last language that it was released in and this was no accident. The foreign news clips served only to wet the appetite in anticipation for the final revelation in English.

So really, the hype is coming at us from 4 sides; We’ve got the non-revealing but highly intriguing trailers, self-perpetuating speculation from the fans, beautiful posters with no clues on them and then the multiple news reports. That’s not mentioning that Empire seem to have new nuggets of news about it almost daily, it’s difficult to avoid some of the bombardment.

So with all this hype will the movie be any good? Well we won’t know that until reviews start coming in from the initial US screenings but from past experience, the outlook doesn’t looks so great. I, personally, haven’t seen hype like this since Blair Witch Project. That movie was the first real success story for Internet based hype, grossing $248 million worldwide and only having a budget of £35,000. I like them numbers! But the film itself was met with mixed reviews… well, to be fair, it was like Marmite, you either loved it or hated it. I know some people who loved it… but more who hated it (the category I fall into). Despite it’s box office success I feel the film was a huge let down, especially when you consider the massive amount of hype that preceded it. The makers seemed to do things backwards: Letting the film serve to enhance the hype, not let the hype enhance the film. I’m worried that Cloverfield may fall victim to the same mistake. The viral publicity is really well done and the films secrecy has been upheld extremely well. It almost seems like the perfect publicity campaign… but so did Blair Witch.

It may not be all that bad though. I tend to take a cynical view of these things. Needless to say I’m uber excited about the release of this film in the UK on the 1st of February. What are your thoughts on the whole thing? I will, of course, be there, ticket in hand, on the first Wednesday of it’s release. See you there.