CLOVERFIELD

It feels impossible thirteen years later to explain the buzz around Cloverfieldback in 2008. It was J.J. Abrams! And he was creating a monster movie that was Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project! People were excited to see it. Why? Because it was J. J. Abrams! Who has got to be one of the kings of self-mythologizing. Why was there genuine excitement to see a movie produced by the dude who had created Lost and Alias and Felicity and directed a bad Mission Impossible? HOLY SHIT! That guy?! He’s producing a movie?! Can you believe it?! The man who makes shows that arrive with a lot of hype, are okay and then nobody rewatches is going to make a movie that will – surprise, surprise – arrive with a lot of hype, be okay and that nobody will rewatch?!

I did rewatch it though. Last year. Because watching a monster destroy a city was oddly soothing. Don’t know what it was about filling my brain full of nightmare scenarios that made me feel better about the current state of the world and my place in it. But it worked. I’ve never felt more at peace than watching T.J. Miller get bitten in half by a giant monster thing.

Since its release Cloverfield has been squished into a franchise with a bunch of films that share little in common beyond the word Cloverfield in the title. 10 Cloverfield Lane, set in the bunker home of a nutso John Goodman, is a fantastic movie. The Cloverfield Paradox, set on a space station, is not. Cloverfield, the original flavour, is somewhere between the two. It’s pretty dumb, but there’s some fun to be had spotting future sitcom stars in the cast – Lizzy Caplan! Ben Feldman! – and then watching all of those people get chased by monsters that look like knock-offs of monsters from better movies.

This is the found footage film that properly kicked the found footage horror genre into gear. The Blair Witch Project couldn’t do it in 1999 – it took until Cloverfield in 2008 to really fire off the genre. One year later the Paranormal Activities arrive and then the genre is off and racing. The “found footage” in this movie comes in the form of a video camera operated by the always off-screen but constantly narrating the action T.J. Miller character Hud, who has the camera because he was asked to film the farewell party for Rob. The party is interrupted by what seems like an earthquake. Everybody files into the street to bear witness to the perfect trailer moment of the severed head of the Statue of Liberty rolling down the street.

Where would I fit into Cloverfield? Why I’d obviously have ended up at Rob’s party, and I certainly would have been asked to film my own testimonial by Hud.

IF I WERE IN 'CLOVERFIELD' I WOULD: BE FREE OF THAT CONVERSATION