Cloverfield is a 2008 monster/horror film directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard. Before the film’s release Paramount Pictures carried out a viral marketing campaign to promote the film. The campaign included viral tie-ins similar to Lost Experience.[5] The film follows five young New Yorkers attending a going-away party on the night that a gigantic monster attacks the city. First publicized within 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 and on February 1 in Ireland, in the UK and in Italy. In Japan, the film was released on April 5.
Plot summary
The film is presented as a video file recovered from a digital hand-held camera by the United States Department of Defense. At the start of the film, it is stated the camera was “found in US-447, area formerly known as Central Park”. The main record of events is interspersed with footage shot on a personal hand-held camera used by various characters prior to the crisis.
On April 27 at 6:42am, Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) awakens after spending a romantic night with longtime platonic friend Beth (Odette Yustman) in her father’s Columbus Circle apartment. They plan to visit Coney Island for the day.
On May 22, Rob’s brother Jason (Mike Vogel) and his girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas) prepare a Manhattan apartment for Rob’s farewell party, as he has accepted a job as a vice president in his company’s office in Japan. Rob’s best friend Hudson “Hud” Platt (T. J. Miller) is given a camera by Jason and the responsibility of recording final goodbyes from family and friends at the party, but instead unsuccessfully flirts with his crush, Marlena (Lizzy Caplan). Beth arrives with a date, Travis (Ben Feldman), which upsets Rob. To his dismay, he realizes Hud is taping over footage of him and Beth, including their trip to Coney Island, which shows up intermittently throughout the film. Lily reveals Rob and Beth slept together several weeks previously, which Hud then shares with other people at the party, making the matter worse. Rob provokes Beth and her date into leaving the party.
While Hud and Jason try to talk to Rob, a brief blackout occurs, and the building shakes. A loud guttural roar can be heard emanating from outside as there is a blackout throughout the city. When the power returns, everyone turns on the local news, where the anchor explains that there was an earthquake and an oil tanker has capsized in the bay off Lower Manhattan. Curious partygoers and apartment dwellers go up to the roof to spot the disaster, where they witness an explosion in Lower Manhattan. As fire and debris begin to rain down, the partygoers flee to the street below. The head of the Statue of Liberty, damaged and charred, crashes down into the street beside them. Hud is able to record a glimpse of what seems to be a giant monster moving through the city. The Woolworth Building collapses in its wake, causing Rob, Jason, Hud and Lily to take refuge in a nearby convenience store while the creature passes, causing extensive damage to the streets around the store. After the confusion and panic, the streets fall silent, and the group finds Marlena outside, obviously shaken by the events, who mentions that she saw the monster eating people. They argue with each other then they decide to use Brooklyn Bridge to exit Lower Manhattan.
On the bridge, they see the capsized oil tanker and the Headless Statue of Liberty. Rob, Jason, Hud, Marlena, and Lily leave on foot via the Brooklyn Bridge. While walking across, Rob gets a cell phone call from a distressed Beth, who tells him that she is stuck in her apartment and unable to move. Hud calls out for Marlena and Lily, but Jason, unable to hear them clearly, does not stop walking. The bridge begins to shake as the monster’s tail suddenly appears and crushes the bridge, killing Jason along with countless others. The bridge collapses as the remaining five and thousands more retreat to the Manhattan streets, with Hud managing to film the destruction and collapse of the Brooklyn Bridge.
As Marlena tries to comfort the grieving Lily over the loss of her boyfriend, Hud approaches Rob, who is still stunned at what had just occurred. Suddenly remembering that his phone conversation with Beth had been interrupted, Rob stops at an electronic store that is being looted where he steals a cell phone battery and finishes listening to Beth’s message. Hud sees the Brooklyn Bridge’s full collapse on the news while outside the military engages the monster as it scratches its back against a skyscraper. The soldiers are attacked by parasitic spider/crab-like creatures that fall off the monster. After some arguing, the four proceed to Manhattan streets to find Beth.
As the group is trekking through the largely deserted streets to Beth’s apartment, they are suddenly caught in a crossfire between the monster and the United States Military, who are attacking the creature with various armoured fighting vehicles and infantry units. The friends barely manage to escape into the Spring Street subway station, although Hud is able to catch a glimpse of the monster’s face. After a long while of hiding, the group decides to go through the subway tunnels to reach Beth’s apartment. In the tunnels they are attacked by several parasites; one parasite grabs Hud and tries to drag him away, but Marlena manages to fend it off with a pipe, only to be attacked and bitten by another parasite. The group flees and takes refuge in a Transit Authority office. Marlena and Hud have an intimate conversation when looking at her bites. The group escapes into the abandoned Bloomingdale’s via the 59th Street subway station, and are engaged by Sergeant Pryce and a squad of infantry, who has taken cover inside the department store and set up a field hospital and command center to treat the hundreds of wounded people while coordinating the military response. Marlena begins to bleed from her bodily orifices. When she is revealed to have been bitten, two men in hazmat suits grab Marlena and take her behind a curtain while Lily, Rob and Hud are grabbed by soldiers and taken away. Hud turns to film at the curtains, just in time to see Marlena’s stomach expand and explode. Rob and the others don’t have much time to grieve as Sergeant Pryce allows them back up to the streets, but warns them to report to a military evacuation site before 6:00 a.m., which is when the last helicopter evacuates Manhattan and the military will enact its ‘Hammerdown’ protocol, which will allow for the sacrifice of Manhattan if necessary to kill the monster and its parasites.
The group continues to Beth’s apartment at Time Warner Center, finding her tower partially collapsed into the adjacent building. The three climb the standing tower and cross onto the roof of Beth’s building and work their way down to her apartment. Beth is found trapped, impaled on a piece of rebar. After the painful rescue, they make their way to an aerial evacuation site near Grand Central Terminal and encounter the monster once more, while the military continues to ineffectively attack it. At the landing zone, Lily is raced into a departing UH-1 helicopter without her friends. A few moments later- Rob, Beth and Hud are taken away in a second helicopter. In the helicopter, they see the monster carpet bombed by a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and it appears to be killed. Just as Hud begins hailing victory over the monster, it reaches up out of a cloud of smoke and attacks the helicopter. The helicopter crashes into a grassy clearing in Central Park. A single frame from the 1933 King Kong movie is inserted here, showing the giant ape being attacked by biplanes. The three survive the crash and hear a voice on the helicopter’s radio warning of the Hammerdown protocol being effected in fifteen minutes, with the pilot telling anyone listening that if they can hear the air raid sirens going off, then they’re in the blast zone and have only two minutes to hustle it out. Hud and Beth pull an injured Rob clear of the wreckage, but Hud returns to recover the camera, and as he does so, the monster appears above him. It examines Hud for a few moments before reaching down to eat him. The monster bites Hud in half and spits out his torso and the camera. Rob rushes forward and retrieves the camera before fleeing with Beth.
The pair take shelter under a bridge in Central Park as air raid sirens begin to blare in the distance, indicating that the “HammerDown” protocol is about to be put into effect. Rob and Beth quickly take turns leaving their last testimonies on camera, just as numerous explosions occur outside and the monster can be heard screaming. The bridge collapses and, as debris cover the camera, Rob and Beth can be heard professing their love to one another before another explosion occurs.
The film cuts to Rob and Beth’s Coney Island date, during which a distant object can be faintly and briefly seen falling from the sky into the ocean accompanied by a faint noise similar to that heard when the monster first arrives.[6] After the credits roll, a garbled radio sound clip can be heard. When played backwards, the audio says, “It’s still alive.
Cast
- Michael Stahl-David as Rob Hawkins
- Mike Vogel as Jason Hawkins
- T.J. Miller as Hudson “Hud” Platt
- Odette Yustman as Elizabeth “Beth” McIntyre
- Jessica Lucas as Lily Ford
- Lizzy Caplan as Marlena Diamond
Production
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 in New York.[10] One cast member indicated that the film would look like it cost $150 million, despite producers not casting recognizable and expensive actors.[7] Filmmakers used the Sony CineAlta F23 high-definition video camera to film nearly all of the New York exterior scenes.[16] Filming took place on Coney Island, with scenes being shot at Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park and the B&B Carousel.[17] 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 in Arcadia, California while the outside scenes of Sephora and the electronics store were filmed in Downtown Los Angeles [18]
The film was shot and edited in a cinéma vérité style,[19] to look like it was filmed with one hand-held camera, including jump cuts 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 mostly half of it made it into the movie.[20] 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.”[21]
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.[15]
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.[15]
