First Person Scarer

Last night I found myself running for my life through the darkened streets of Manhattan as buildings collapsed around me, sending waves of masonary-filled dust clouds washing over helpless civilians, and trying desperately to stay alive in the face of some unknown.....thing.

Well, that's what it felt like anyway.

I was actually sitting in the comfort of the Broadway cinema watching the latest offering from Lost and Alias creator J J Abrams, the cryptically named Cloverfield. To say I was impressed is an understatement. To say I was pretty much dazzled and blown away with its ingenuity is much closer to the mark.

I've loved monster movies since I was a kid, cutting my teeth, so to speak, on the old Universal and Hammer movies that they used to shown on television on Saturday afternoons in Canada, where I was brought up.

I've lost count of the number of Godzilla movies I've seen, not to mention virtually ever other permutation of radiation, atomic energy, man-made viruses and animals and insects that have stomped, rampaged, run amok, and in the case of The Blob, oozed through the towns and cities of this ball of rock we call home.

Never before, though, have I been placed right in the action, at ground level, as ignorant, frightened and confused as the rest of the people generally are (except for the one bespectacled scientist who figures the whole mess out in a matter of minutes), and I loved it.

The biggest surprise, though, is that this idea has never been done before. Yes, the Blair Witch Project, which I saw when it came out and was immensely disappointed by, pretty much pioneered the notion of presenting the whole movie from the point of view of just a hand held camera, but aside from a few odd trinkets hanging from the trees and the disturbing sight of Heather Donahue's snotty nose in all its 20-foot glory, there was no sense of unease or terror.

Cloverfield, however, nailed this in spades. No doubt aided by the memories of footage from 9/11 showing confused New Yorkers running scared through dust-filled streets, the images of destruction and the sense of not knowing what the hell was going on had me nailed to the edge of my seat.

Even cleverer than the movie, however, was the (almost) innovative internet build-up. Beginning mid-way through last year with a brief teaser trailer that gave nothing away, not even the name of the movie, the campaign managed to succeed in the viral marketing stakes where so many others had previously failed, and more importantly, delivered one hell of a monstrous punch line.

The only other campaign to even come close was the build up last Spring for yearzero, the most recent Nine Inch Nails album, which led fans, myself included, on a lengthy, intelligent and incredibly deep journey into the background of the concept album, which revolves around events that could realistically happen in America in the near future, and was thus even more chilling than the slightly less likely scenario played out in Cloverfield. (Check out http://www.ninwiki.com/Main_Page for an example of what one man's fertile imagination can conjure up - you won't be disappointed, I promise.)

Undoubtably there will be imitations in the coming months and years of Cloverfield and its build-up, but they will lack the impact of this groundbreaking movie and campaign. See it on the big screen if you can, but definitely catch it on DVD. I guarantee that this is one of those movies that will be spoken of with respect in the coming years as having taken a tired old genre, the monster movie, and breathing new life into it.

Hang on, I just heard something outside. Let me grab my camera and I'll be right back...........