Monster, alien or something else: where did the ‘Cloverfield’ creature come from?
Modern franchises feel increasingly – and frustratingly in many cases – obliged to painstakingly explain every aspect of their respective mythologies, something that wasn’t on the minds of the Cloverfield creative team when their monster movie stomped into cinemas in January 2008.
Found footage was already on a downward slope by the time the film came along, but putting a kaiju-sized spin on the formula breathed new life into the standard handheld histrionics, with an ever-dwindling cast of characters forced to fight for survival when a hulking beast decides to wreak havoc on New York City.
Backed by a viral marketing campaign that piqued the interest of audiences everywhere, Cloverfield wasn’t just a huge box office hit that gave rise to an entire cinematic universe, but it was a calling card for several key players who quickly moved onto bigger, better, and brighter things.
It was only Matt Reeves’ second feature as a director and his first since David Schwimmer rom-com The Pallbearer a dozen years previously, it was the first feature screenplay attributed to Drew Goddard, and just the second film – and first in six years – to be backed by J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk’s production company Bad Robot, which now has its fingers in a number of multi-billion dollar pies.
Although the aesthetic was partially down to budgetary reasons, an estimated $30million to craft Cloverfield was hardly chump change, but the breezy 85-minute running time never gives either the protagonists or audience a chance to pause and catch their breath, never mind ask the question of what exactly the monster is, and how it got to Earth in the first place.
It wasn’t entirely unexplained, either, with the creature’s origins being hidden in plain sight. As Reeves explained to SyFy, the footage from the very end of the film, which technically unfolds at the beginning of Cloverfield story-wise, spelt it right out for anyone who cared to pay extra attention to every frame.
“At the end of the movie, you can see the moment when it comes,” the director revealed. “It’s another one of those little Easter Egg moments, but when we revisit that footage where they’re on the Ferris wheel at the end, you can see the meteor flying down and hitting the ocean. That’s actually the beginning of the baby being on Earth.”
When asked directly if it was a monster, an extra-terrestrial, or something else entirely, Reeves confirmed that “it’s alien.” Of course, that was made abundantly clear in 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox, but it’s never explicitly clarified in the opening instalment whether the hulking behemoth rampaging through the streets of the ‘Big Apple’ came from beyond the stars, or if it was of a more earthly vintage like Godzilla or King Kong.
