here it is!!
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Plot summary
On the night of May 22, 2009, in which five friends throw a going-away party, a giant monster attacks Manhattan. The film depicts their attempts to survive the attack, presented as a recording from their hand-held video camera.
Jason (Mike Vogel) and his girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas) throw a surprise going-away party for Jason's brother, Rob (Michael Stahl-David) after he accepts a job in Japan. "Hud" (T. J. Miller) is given the task of documenting Rob's last night in the United States and attempts to attract the attention of his crush, Marlena (Lizzy Caplan). An argument erupts between Rob and his friend, Beth (Odette Yustman), after it is revealed the two have had sex. Rob is angry because Beth has arrived with a date. Beth is upset at Rob for not calling her for nearly a month afterwards, and she leaves the party with her date. Gaps in the footage reveal scenes from a trip Rob and Beth took to Coney Island one month beforehand. Hud and Jason then encourage Rob to pursue a romantic relationship with Beth despite the fact he's leaving the country.
Suddenly the building rocks with earthquake intensity as loud animal-like noises reverberate outside. Large parts of the city briefly lose power. From the roof, the friends see a large explosion in the distance and they flee to the street where the head of the Statue of Liberty crashes to the ground as further explosions and a gargantuan creature are visible in the distance. The friends attempt to leave Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge where they see a decapitated Statue of Liberty and a capsized oil tanker off in the distance. The group turns around however after Rob receives a phone call from Beth who is trapped in her apartment on Manhattan. The bridge then begins to collapse after the creature attacks it. Jason dies as the tail of the monster strikes the section of the bridge that he is standing on, destroying the Brooklyn Bridge as well cutting off this path of escape.
The group takes shelter in an electronics store so Rob can get a new battery for his cell phone. During this time, Hud points his camera at a news report on TV with video footage of the creature from news helicopters, briefly giving the audience a better look at it. U.S. Military ground forces arrive to battle the creature and are attacked by smaller dog-sized, crab-like parasite creatures which fall from its body. Rob and his remaining friends resolve to rescue Beth and make their way to her apartment via a subway tunnel, where Marlena is bitten by one of the smaller creatures after saving Hud while the group was being attacked. The group then reaches a U.S. Army field hospital where Marlena begins to bleed through various orifices. She is taken behind a screen, where her torso appears to explode.
After receiving information regarding the evacuation of the city, and a warning that Manhattan will be bombed by the military should they fail to contain the creature, the friends continue to Beth's apartment, which has partially toppled into a neighboring building. Finding Beth alive, but injured, they make their way to the evacuation site. Lily is placed in the last seat of a departing helicopter. Rob, Beth and Hud board another helicopter and watch as a B-2 Stealth Bomber drops several bombs on the creature, creating a cloud of dust and debris. However, the creature survives this bombing and lunges up, hitting the friends' helicopter and sending it out of control. They survive the crash in Central Park, but Hud is killed by the creature after it attempts to consume him.
Retrieving the camera, Rob and Beth take shelter under a bridge, where they each briefly address anyone who might find the film. Air-raid sirens sound and an explosion collapses the bridge, partially covering the camera with debris. Rob and Beth proclaim their love for each other before a second explosion covers the camera completely in rubble. The final scene returns to the footage from Coney Island, where in the background an object can be seen falling from the sky into the water.[7] After the credits are shown, a short radio transmission plays.[8] According to J.J. Abrams, the movie's producer, this object is a Tagurato company satellite which fell into the ocean, disturbing the monster, which has been lying dormant at the bottom of the ocean for thousands of years.[9]
Cast
Michael Stahl-David as Robert Hawkins. The main protagonist in the movie. On the night of the incident was his surprise party because he's moving to Japan for a vice president job. He also is Beth's love interest and throughout the movie, we see clips from him and Beth's date. It is unknown if he survives.
T. J. Miller as Hudson "Hud" Platt, Rob's best friend. He is given camera duties by Jason to film the party. During the party, he tries to gain the attention of Jason and Lily's friend, Marlena. He dies after being attacked by the monster when he was under it.
Jessica Lucas as Lily Ford. Jason's girlfriend. She and Jason planned the surprise party for Rob. When Jason dies, she decides to go with Rob (along with Hud) to go save Beth. The last time she is seen is when she goes into a helicopter.
Odette Yustman as Elizabeth "Beth" McIntyre. Rob's love interest. During jump cuts in the movie, we see clips of Rob and Beth's date. After the monster attacks, she gets injured and is stuck in her room. Rob, Hud, and Lily save her from apartment, which was tipped on the other side of the building.
Lizzy Caplan as Marlena Diamond. A friend of Jason and Lily. She is Hud's love interest in this movie and at certain points Hud tries to get her attention. After an attack by the parasites, she says that "she wasn't supposed to be at the party". As a result from a spider bite in an earlier scene, she dies from the bite.
Mike Vogel as Jason "Hawk" Hawkins. Rob's brother and Lily's boyfriend. He is seen wearing a Slusho t-shirt, which was given to him by Rob. He dies when the monster attacked the bridge.
To prevent the leaking of plot information, instead of auditioning the actors with scenes from the film, scripts from Abrams's previous productions were used, such as television series Alias and Lost. Some scenes were also written specifically for the audition process, not intended for use in the film. Despite not being told the premise of the film, Lizzy Caplan stated that she accepted a role in Cloverfield solely because she was a fan of the Abrams-produced television series Lost, and her experience of discovering its true nature initially caused her to state that she would not sign on for a film in the future "without knowing full well what it is." She indicated that her character was a sarcastic outsider, and that her role was "physically demanding."[10]
Production
Development
The poster for Escape from New York (1981) inspired the scene of the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty in CloverfieldJ. J. Abrams conceived of a new monster after he and his son visited a toy store in Japan while promoting Mission: Impossible III. He explained, "We saw all these Godzilla toys, and I thought, we need our own [American] monster, and not King Kong, King Kong's adorable. I wanted something that was just insane and intense."[11] In February 2007, Paramount Pictures secretly greenlit Cloverfield, to be produced by Abrams, directed by Matt Reeves, and written by Drew Goddard. The project was produced by Abrams' company, Bad Robot Productions.[12]
The decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty was inspired by the poster of the 1981 film Escape from New York, which had shown the head lying in the streets in New York despite not appearing in the film itself. According to Reeves, "It's an incredibly provocative image. And that was the source that inspired [producer] J.J. [Abrams] to say, 'Now this would be an interesting idea for a movie.'"[13]
The film was titled Cloverfield from the beginning, but the title changed throughout production before it was finalized as the original title. Matt Reeves explained that the title was changed frequently due to the hype caused by the teaser trailer, "That excitement spread to such a degree that we suddenly couldn't use the name anymore. So we started using all these names like Slusho and Cheese.[14] And people always found out what we were doing!" The director said that "Cloverfield" was the government's case designate for the monster, comparing the titling to that of the Manhattan Project. "And it's not a project per se. It's the way that this case has been designated. That's why that is on the trailer, and it becomes clearer in the film. It's how they refer to this phenomenon [or] this case," said the director.[15] The film's final title, "Cloverfield", is the name of a main street in Santa Monica, CA, near Abrams's office.[16][14]
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.[12] One cast member indicated that the film would look like it cost $150 million, despite producers not casting recognizable and expensive actors.[10] Filmmakers used the F23 high-definition camera from Sony to film exterior scenes.[17] Filming took place on Coney Island, with scenes being shot at Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park and the B&B Carousel.[18] Some interior shots were filmed on a soundstage at Downey, California.[19] The film was edited to look like it was filmed with one hand-held camera, including jump cuts similar to ones found in home movies. 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," [20].
Creature design
Visual effects supervisor Phil Tippett and his company Tippett Studio were enlisted to develop the visual effects for Cloverfield.[21] Because the visual effects were incorporated after filming, cast members had to react to a non-existent creature during scenes, only being familiar with early conceptual renderings of the beast.[22] Artist Neville Page designed the monster, thoroughly creating a biological rationale for the creature, even if many of his ideas would not show up on screen. The key idea behind the monster was that he was an immature creature suffering from "separation anxiety". This recalls real-life elephants who get frightened and lash out at the circus, because the director felt "there's nothing scarier than something huge that's spooked".[23]
Marketing
Filmmakers decided to create a teaser trailer that would be a surprise in the light of commonplace media saturation, which they put together during the preparation stage of the production process. The teaser was then used as a basis for the film itself. Paramount Pictures encouraged the teaser to be released without a title attached, and the Motion Picture Association of America approved the move.[20] As Transformers showed high tracking numbers before its release in July 2007, the studio attached the teaser trailer for Cloverfield that showed the release date of January 18, 2008 but not the title.[12] A second trailer was released on November 16, 2007, which confirmed the title.[24]
The studio had kept knowledge of the project secret from the online community, a cited rarity due to the presence of scoopers that follow upcoming films. The controlled release of information on the film has been observed as a risky strategy, which could succeed like The Blair Witch Project (1999) or disappoint like Snakes on a Plane (2006), the latter of which had generated online hype but failed to attract large audiences. Chad Hartigan of Exhibitor Relations Co. viewed the several issues with the potential of the film, including a lack of major stars, the underwhelming performance of Godzilla-style films in America, and the film's slated release in January, considered a "dumping ground for bad films".[25]
Pre-release plot speculation
The sudden appearance of the untitled trailer for Cloverfield fueled media speculation over the film's plot. USA Today reported the possibilities of the film being based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, a live-action adaptation of Voltron, a new film about Godzilla, or a spin-off of the TV show Lost.[26] The Star Ledger also reported the possibility of the film being based on Lovecraft lore or Godzilla.[27] The Guardian also reported the possibility of a Lost spin-off,[28] while Time Out reported that the film was about an alien called The Parasite.[29] IGN also backed the possibility of the same premise, with The Parasite rumored to be a working title for the film.[15] Online, Slusho and Colossus had also been discussed as possible titles.[30] Entertainment Weekly also disputed reports that the film would be about a parasite or a colossal Asian robot such as Voltron.[31]
Visitors of the website Ain't It Cool News have pointed out 9/11 allusions based on the destruction in New York City such as the decapitated Statue of Liberty. The film has also drawn alternate reality game enthusiasts that have followed other viral marketing campaigns like those set up for the TV series Lost, the video game Halo 2, the Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero, and the upcoming Batman film The Dark Knight. Members of the forums at argn.com and unfiction.com have investigated the background of the film, with the "1-18-08" section at Unfiction generating over 7,700 posts in August 2007. The members have studied photographs on the film's official site, potentially related MySpace profiles,[32] and the Comic-Con teaser poster for the film.[25] A popular piece of fan art posited that the monster was a mutated blue whale.[23]
Viral tie-ins
Photos on the 1-18-08.com viral marketing website.Puzzle websites containing Lovecraftian elements, such as Ethan Haas Was Right, were originally reported to be connected to the film.[26][28] On July 9, 2007, producer J. J. Abrams stated that, while a number of websites were being developed to market the film, the only official site that had been found was 1-18-08.com.[33] At the site, a collection of time-coded photos are provided to visitors to piece together a series of events and interpret their meanings.[34]
As part of the viral marketing campaign, the drink Slusho! has served as a tie-in. The drink had previously appeared in producer Abrams' previous creation, the TV series Alias.[35] Viral websites for Slusho! and a Japanese drilling company named Tagruato (タグルアト, Taguruato?) were launched to add to the mythology of Cloverfield.[6] When Cloverfield was hosted at Comic-Con 2007, gray Slusho! t–shirts were distributed to attendees.[36] Fans who had registered at the Slusho! website for Cloverfield received e-mails of fictional sonar images prior to the film's release that showed a deep-sea creature heading toward Manhattan.[37]
Producer Bryan Burk explained the viral tie-in, "[It] was all done in conjunction with the studio… The whole experience in making this movie is very reminiscent [of] how we did Lost."[6] Director Matt Reeves described Slusho! as "part of the involved connectivity" with Abrams' Alias and that the drink represented a "meta-story" for Cloverfield. The director explained, "It's almost like tentacles that grow out of the film and lead, also, to the ideas in the film. And there's this weird way where you can go see the movie and it's one experience… But there's also this other place where you can get engaged where there's this other sort of aspect for all those people who are into that. […] All the stories kind of bounce off one another and inform each other. But, at the end of the day, this movie stands on its own to be a movie. […] The Internet sort of stories and connections and clues are, in a way, a prism and they're another way of looking at the same thing. To us, it's just another exciting aspect of the storytelling."[35]
Merchandise
A four installment manga series by Yoshiki Togawa titled Cloverfield/Kishin (クローバーフィールド／ＫＩＳＨＩＮ, Kurōbāfīrudo/KISHIN?) is being released by Japanese publisher Kadokawa Shoten.[38] The story focuses on a Japanese high school student named Kishin Aiba, who is trapped on a Tagruato freighter ship, and will be a prequel to the film.[39]
Based on the successful opening weekend of Cloverfield in theaters, Hasbro began accepting orders for a 14-inch collectible toy figure of the monster and its parasites to be shipped to fans by September 30, 2008.[40]
Reception
Cloverfield opened in 3,411 theaters on January 18, 2008 and grossed a total of $16,930,000 on its opening day in the United States and Canada. It made $41,000,000 on its opening weekend, making it the most successful January release gross of all time. Worldwide, it has grossed $51 million.[41] As of January 19, 2008, review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 76% of critics gave the film positive write-ups, based on 117 reviews.[42] According to Metacritic, the film has received an average critic score of 62%, based on 34 reviews.[43]
Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle calls the film "the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in my adult moviegoing life […] a pure-blood, grade A, exultantly exhilarating monster movie." He cites Matt Reeves' direction, the "whip-smart, stylistically invisible" script and the "nearly subconscious evocation of our current paranoid, terror-phobic times" as the keys to the film's success, saying that telling the story through the lens of one character's camera "works fantastically well."[44] Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter called it "chillingly effective", praising the effects and the film's "claustrophobic intensity". He said that though the characters "aren't particularly interesting or developed", there was "something refreshing about a monster movie that isn't filled with the usual suspects."[45] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly said that the film was "surreptitiously subversive, [a] stylistically clever little gem", and that while the characters were "vapid, twenty-something nincompoops" and the acting "appropriately unmemorable", the decision to tell the story through amateur footage was "brilliant".[46] Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that the film is "pretty scary at times" and cites "unmistakable evocations of 9/11". He concludes that "all in all, it is an effective film, deploying its special effects well and never breaking the illusion that it is all happening as we see it."[47]
Todd McCarthy of Variety called the film an "old-fashioned monster movie dressed up in trendy new threads", praising the special effects, "nihilistic attitude" and "post-9/11 anxiety overlay", but said, "In the end, [it's] not much different from all the marauding creature features that have come before it."[48] Scott Foundas of LA Weekly was critical of the film's allusions to the September 11, 2001 attacks and called it "cheap and opportunistic". He compared its "stealth" attempts at social commentary unfavorably to the films of Don Siegel, George A. Romero and Steven Spielberg, saying, "Where those filmmakers all had something meaningful to say about the state of the world and […] human nature, Abrams doesn't have much to say about anything."[49] Manohla Dargis in the New York Times called the allusions "tacky", saying, "[The images] may make you think of the attack, and you may curse the filmmakers for their vulgarity, insensitivity or lack of imagination", but that "the film is too dumb to offend anything except your intelligence." She concludes that the film "works as a showcase for impressively realistic-looking special effects, a realism that fails to extend to the scurrying humans whose fates are meant to invoke pity and fear but instead inspire yawns and contempt."[50] Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com calls the film "badly constructed, humorless and emotionally sadistic", and sums up by saying that the film "takes the trauma of 9/11 and turns it into just another random spectacle at which to point and shoot."[51] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune warned that the viewer may feel "queasy" at the references to September 11, but that "other sequences […] carry a real jolt" and that such tactics were "crude, but undeniably gripping". He called the film "dumb", but "quick and dirty and effectively brusque", concluding that despite it being "a harsher, more demographically calculating brand of fun", he enjoyed the film.[52] Bruce Paterson of Cinephilia described the film as "a successful experiment in style but not necessarily a successful story for those who want dramatic closure."[53]
Soundtrack
Cloverfield, being presented as if it were a recording by one of the characters, has no film score save for the composition "ROAR! (Cloverfield Overture)" by Michael Giacchino that plays over the end credits[52] and music played during Rob's goodbye party, which includes songs by artists such as Gorillaz ("19-2000"), Sean Kingston ("Beautiful Girls"), Spoon ("The Underdog"), Kings of Leon ("Taper Jean Girl"), Ratatat ("Seventeen Years"), Coconut Records ("West Coast"), Bright Eyes ("Four Winds"), and culminating with Of Montreal ("Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games").[citation needed]
DVD release
According to website VideoETA.com, the film is estimated to have a possible DVD release June 2008.[54]
Sequel
At the premiere of the film Matt Reeves talked about possibilities on how a sequel will turn out if the film succeeds. Reeves states,
"While we were on set making the film we talked about the possibilities and directions of how a sequel can go. The fun of this movie was that it might not have been the only movie being made that night, there might be another movie! In today’s day and age of people filming their lives on their iphones and handy cams, uploading it to youtube…That was kind of exciting thinking about that.[55]
There's a moment on the Brooklyn Bridge, and there was a guy filming something on the side of the bridge, and Hud sees him filming and he turns over and he sees the ship that's been capsized and sees the headless Statue of Liberty, and then he turns back and this guy's briefly filming him. In my mind that was two movies intersecting for a brief moment, and I thought there was something interesting in the idea that this incident happened and there are so many different points of view, and there are several different movies at least happening that evening and we just saw one piece of another."
Reeves also points out that the end scene on Coney Island, shows something falling into the ocean in the background.[23]
here it is!!
