Cloverfield (2008): A Found Footage Post-9/11 Kaiju Nightmare
Cloverfield (2008): A Found Footage Post-9/11 Kaiju Nightmare "An American kaiju movie shot like a home video—and somehow, that makes it scarier." — 5/5 Stars Let’s settle this upfront: Cloverfield is a kaiju movie. Not a “sort of” or a “loosely inspired by”—it’s a full-blooded, city-stomping, ocean-rising kaiju film, filtered through the trembling lens of a handheld camcorder. Directed by Matt Reeves (years before he’d don the cape for The Batman ) and produced by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, the 2008 thriller arrived not with fanfare, but with silence: a cryptic teaser in theaters showing only chaos in New York and a date— 1-18-2008 . No title. No explanation. Just raw, disorienting footage that felt less like marketing and more like a distress signal. That teaser was just the tip of the iceberg. What followed was one of the most innovative marketing campaigns in modern film his...