Producer J.J. Abrams is no stranger to mind games. As the creative puppet-master behind "Lost," "Alias," and the upcoming "Star Trek" revamp, the 41-year-old has a knack for choosing enigmatic projects. "Cloverfield," his hush-hush monster movie directed by "Felicity" co-creator Matt Reeves and in theaters Friday, has even hard-core Dharma and Rambaldi obsessives happily scratching their heads.
Thanks to a killer viral marketing strategy that has been unfolding for months, "Cloverfield" has become one of the most buzzed about, yet still über-secretive movies of the new year. First teased to audiences last summer before screenings of Michael Bay's "Transformers" and hyped during Comic-Con (Abrams promised screaming fans a "great monster movie . . . something that was just insane and intense"), the Paramount production has only recently begun a traditional advertising campaign of television advertisements and billboards, instead relying on hidden viral clues, buried websites, impassioned bloggers, and online word-of-mouth to tease and entice audiences.
"Viral campaigns are a great marketing tool that give people a taste of what they want and then pulling back, which really creates a mystique about the project," says Paul Dergarabedian, of the tracking firm Media By Numbers. "Especially with J.J. Abrams - with the whole 'Lost' experience and the aura of mystery surrounding that show, such marketing subterfuge really works people up into a frenzy and creates a 'want to see' factor. It also helps that ['Cloverfield'] is a smaller film so it can afford to take risks."
Viral campaigns have also come a long way since "The Blair Witch Project," which famously used the Web to catapult the low-budget indie film into a $248 million blockbuster, in 1999. In addition to "Cloverfield," "The Dark Knight," director Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" sequel out this July, is also using a highly complex campaign, designed by alternate reality game (ARG) pros 42 Entertainment. It involves faux-vandalized websites, a real-life scavenger hunt, and user-submitted photos. No amount of hype or online gimmickry, however, can ultimately make up for a mediocre product. Just ask the producers of "Snakes on a Plane."
So how much do we actually know about "Cloverfield"? While the director and cast remain fairly tight-lipped in interviews, the film's trailers and official site confirm a plot about five New Yorkers throwing a going-away party for a Japan-bound friend (Michael Stahl-David) when a monster "the size of a skyscraper" descends upon the city. Meanwhile, extensive probing of multiple unofficial - yet Paramount-owned - websites, including character MySpace profiles and home pages for the fictional Japanese companies Slusho, a soft-drink manufacturer, and Tagruato, a deep-sea drilling outfit, rewards the faithful with quirky clues, such as time-stamped photos of New York under siege, a recording of the unknown monster's roar, sonar images, foreign news clips about a monster attack, and a recipe in Japanese requiring an ingredient called "deep-sea nectar," which suggest a much more Byzantine plot.
Throw in some truly mind-boggling bits of Abrams's cross-promotion - Slusho was first mentioned in the second episode of "Alias" (Michael Vartan tells Jennifer Garner, "They're delicious") and was featured in both the Nov. 19 episode of "Heroes" (Kristen Bell's Elle is seen drinking Slusho before confronting Hayden Panettiere's Claire) and co-executive producer Greg Beeman's blog - and the scope of "Cloverfield's" marketing really starts to become clear.
Connecting the narrative dots are alert bloggers such as Dennis Acevedo, a Kentucky-based software engineer who updates CloverfieldClues.com, and eagle-eyed posters at the alternate reality gaming forum Unfiction - most of whom put great faith in the "mystical" deep-sea nectar as a connective factor between the Slusho and Tagruato websites.
Perhaps the latter's conveniently located drills off the coast of New York provoke a Godzilla-like monster into decapitating Lady Liberty? Or maybe the monster sticks to chasing young adults through Central Park, as suggested by a call sheet found by another blog in the network? Regardless of how much of the film is actually revealed before its premiere, Acevedo isn't complaining. "As long as I'm interested in a movie, I want to find out all I can about it," he says. "By following the viral Web clues, you get a whole, specially-created back story that's not something you would necessarily get if you just see the film."
