Alias was about to end, Lost had become a cultural phenomenon, and Abrams was traveling the world promoting his directorial debut with Mission: Impossible 3. Somehow, Abrams was just getting started. At Paramount’s 2007 San Diego Comic-Con panel, Abrams said that while promoting MI3 in Japan, he had visited a toy store with his son.
Abrams wanted “our own monster,” something “insane and intense,” rather than King Kong, who he called “adorable.” So he decided to make a movie about one. That’s how Cloverfield was born. Abrams tapped Lost writer Drew Goddard to write the script and longtime collaborator Matt Reeves to direct.
The first teaser appeared before Transformers in July 2007. At Comic-Con, Abrams showed a poster of a beheaded Statue of Liberty looming over a smoky New York City. Just a release date: Jan. 18, 2008.
Keep in mind, this was the same panel that showed early footage from Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Abrams’ live-action Star Trek. Say what you will about some of his less-loved work, but Abrams knows how to generate hype and mystery. Cloverfield, newly streaming on Peacock (but also available on Paramount Plus and for free on Pluto TV), is worthy of both.
The easiest way to describe Cloverfield is as a perfect marriage of found-footage horror like The Blair Witch Project and a kaiju creature feature. A big monster attacks New York City, but the film is told entirely through video footage recorded on a personal camcorder. That allows Cloverfield to do some clever things with its structure.
It technically opens on cryptic and generic footage that tells us we’re looking at evidence obtained by the U.S. It notes “multiple sightings” of a case designated as “Cloverfield” and that the camera was retrieved at the “incident site … formerly known as Central Park.” Right away, this spells disaster, but then we see a charming little date between Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Beth (Odette Annable) in New York City as they travel to Coney Island. The bulk of the movie takes place almost a month later as Rob prepares to leave New York for a new job in Japan.
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