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The whole found footage malarkey was popularized by The Blair Witch Project back in 1999. Since Cloverfield there have been quite a number of found footage films - The Devil Inside, The Last Exorcism, Apollo 18, Quarantine (a remake of the genuinely frightening Spanish horror film [Rec]) Project X and Chronicle. It appears to have reached its zenith with Paramount’s own Paranormal Activity franchise. The low cost has meant that all of these films have been profitable. However, I find it a shame that since Cloverfield no studio has attempted to employ the covert, under the radar tactic of filmmaking. I imagine that today’s technology would probably just make it too hard to set-up while also relying on the hope that none of the cast and crew blab.

I viewed Cloverfield on the Monday after its opening weekend. I went in having only viewed the trailers, avoiding all reviews and covering my ears whenever I heard people talking about it. I imagine that this is how Abrams and Reeves would have wanted it. It was nice to see a new spin on a monster movie told from the point of view of a regular guy. There has been a lot of talk of a sequel, and while it would be nice to revisit this world, the film doesn’t need one. It’s not about seeing the heroes save the day by finally destroying the monster. It’s about what we can gather and understand from the found footage presented to us. These are just normal survivors with no real special skills (except for maybe Hud’s ability to keep on filming), and seeing how they react in a terrifying situation.

The ploy of keeping as much as possible all hush-hush was the one defining factor that contributed to Cloverfield’s success. If you wanted to know what the monster looked like, or what happened to the survivors, then you had to pay for a ticket. Abrams employed a similar tactic on Super 8, where all signs indicated that the film is centred around an alien, but by holding back on shots of the creature itself everyone wanted to know what it looked like. In some cases the packaging can be more exciting than the contents itself. Thing is, Cloverfield doesn’t really have a big secret or a whopping great twist; clever marketing (to the point where you’re refusing to even give people a title) made audiences think that there was more. It’s just a monster movie. But what helps is that Cloverfield is a good one.

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