At first there were only small pieces of the puzzle to see. A mysterious teaser trailer in the cinema, various websites and vague theories as to what Lost mastermind JJ Abrams has come up with here as a producer. Today we know how the ingenious 2007 marketing campaign turned found footage blockbuster Cloverfield into a Blair Witch Project-style viral sensation.
The film by the later director of The Batman, Matt Reeves, remains without the media hype of the time impressively intense alien terror, which combines a realistic catastrophe scenario with the direct found footage technique. At Paramount + you can stream the sci-fi highlight with a subscription. *
Sci-fi banger Cloverfield delves deep into the fear and panic of emergency situations
At the beginning of the film, it is pointed out that the subsequent recordings are from a camera found in what used to be Central Park in New York. This is followed by the introduction of Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who is going to New York to throw a farewell party with friends as he is moving to Japan for a new job. The celebration is eventually rocked by power outages and earthquakes, followed by an even greater catastrophe.
Similar to Steven Spielberg’s oppressive masterpiece War of the Worlds, Cloverfield also functions as an at times unbearably intensive confrontation with a post-9/11 America that deep-seated fear of new terror attacks and drastic states of emergency is embossed.
The now rather unpopular found footage technique is a great triumph here, as we are thrown into a realistic catastrophe incident along with the main characters.
The blurred recordings, constant panic and helplessly overwhelmed hectic mix into a merciless firework of terror that ignites hell on earth in just 84 minutes (even less without the credits).
Except for the opening part, Cloverfield doesn’t give you a second’s breather, with the terrifying alien only being fully revealed late and then only very briefly. Matt Reeves’ film has long since become a terror nightmare, which is still one of the best sci-fi blockbusters of the last 20 years.
Podcast for series fans: 15 sci-fi highlights starting this year on Netflix, Disney+ and more
In the coming months, there will be franchise replenishments from Star Trek, Star Wars and the MCU as well as lots of other new genres to be discovered on Netflix, Disney+ and Co. In the podcast we take a closer look at 15 innovations that will be launched this year.
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Chaotic time travel, survival struggles at the edge of the universe, gripping alien conspiracies on earth or dystopian societies in the post-apocalypse: the sci-fi series starting in 2023 show how diverse the genre can be.
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