The 822 Cloverfield Company

NOTE: While this isn’t necessarily a review, and the movie only contained few things that could be spoiled, the following MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS, so please only read if you’ve seen it, or don’t really care. You can read a real review below.

J.J. Abrams’ new movie (his first full length?), “Cloverfield,” was known for a long time as “1-18-08,” because when anyone had first heard anything about it, it was from a trailer attached to the “Transformers” movie that offered no title, just that date. This, of course, is a brilliant way to get people talking, and was just the first part of what they now call a Viral Marketing Campaign.

This Viral Marketing Campaign certainly paid off for the film. At 7:45 on a Friday night, it’s no surprise that the theater was packed, but it may have been the first film I’ve seen a theater, without the name “Harry Potter” or “Spider-Man,” that had literally every seat sold out (which has lead me to already plan my first viewing of “Dark Knight,” a movie with an even more viral campaign).

My personal opinion of the movie is the following: It was fun, had some decent drama as more and more characters died, and it absolutely would not have worked if it weren’t for the handheld camera approach—which made me nauseous. The ending was satisfying for me, in part because it left lots of stuff open to learn more and to research on the Internet, and partly because it really pissed off a lot of people in the theater that I didn’t like on principle. Watching the movie was fun and seldom more, but the aftermath was the real experience.

“Cloverfield” is one of those never-going-happen-to-me kind of disaster movies that is fun to overanalyze and realistically plan for. “We’d be prepared if that ever happened,” my girlfriend told me earnestly, and I agreed 100%. After all, we knew not to go into the subway tunnels; we knew to run if the rats were running; and most importantly, we knew that no matter what, getting bit always equates to something bad, whether its from a zombie, a vampire, or as in this case, the weird spawn of the giant lizard bug thing from “Cloverfield.” (Note to all movie monsters: don’t even bother with us, we’re very well prepared).

Even though we knew we’d be ok if it ever happened, the drive home after the post-movie activities was dedicated to “imagine if that ever really did happen” conversations, as well as weighing the pros and cons of the attack being in Manhattan versus somewhere else in the country (Pros for it being on Manhattan: “at least it’s an island. You could just destroy the whole island if you had to.” Pros for somewhere else: maybe it would be further from here).

If I could sum up the experience of seeing “Cloverfield,” it would be “that movie was great.” If I could some up the experience of seeing the movie and all of the conversation and analysis that followed, it would be “that movie is terrifying.” While I’m sure that Mr. Abrams was going for terrifying, I’m pretty much positive he wasn’t going to realism. But for a never-going-to-happen-anyone kind of disaster movie, it sure managed to get pretty real.