Cloverfield Begins Streaming on Peacock in the US on October 1

In early 2006, J.J. Abrams was in the middle of a generational run. Alias was about to end. Lost had become a cultural phenomenon. Abrams was traveling the world to promote his directorial debut, Mission: Impossible 3, and he was only getting started.

At Paramount’s 2007 San Diego Comic-Con panel, Abrams said he had visited a toy store in Japan with his son while promoting MI3. His son wanted Godzilla toys. Abrams wanted “our own monster,” something “insane and intense,” rather than King Kong, whom he called “adorable.” So he decided to make a movie about one.

That’s how Cloverfield was born. Abrams tapped Lost writer Drew Goddard for the script and longtime collaborator Matt Reeves to direct. The first teaser ran before Transformers in July 2007. At Comic-Con, Abrams showed a poster of a beheaded Statue of Liberty looming over a smoky New York City. It had no title and no actors, only a release date: Jan. 18, 2008. The same panel also showed early footage from Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Abrams’ live-action Star Trek.

Say what you will about some of his less-loved work, but Abrams knows how to generate hype and mystery. Cloverfield lives up to both. It’s newly streaming on Peacock, and it’s also available on Paramount Plus and for free on Pluto TV.

What is Cloverfield about?

The easiest description is a marriage of found-footage horror like The Blair Witch Project and a kaiju creature feature. A big monster attacks New York City, and the film is told entirely through video recorded on a personal camcorder. That setup lets Cloverfield play clever tricks with its structure. It technically opens on cryptic government footage, which says we’re looking at evidence obtained by the U.S. Department of Defense. The text notes “multiple sightings” of a case designated “Cloverfield” and says the camera was retrieved at the “incident site … formerly known as Central Park.”

That opening spells disaster. Then we see a charming little date between Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Beth (Odette Annable) as they travel to Coney Island.

The bulk of the movie takes place almost a month later, as Rob prepares to leave New York for a new job in Japan. At his going-away party, his friends record messages for him on the camcorder. His strained relationship with Beth hangs over the night. She heads home early, and she isn’t the only one frustrated by how the evening has gone. It’s about to get a lot worse.

Then an explosion lights up the skyline, the city begins to unravel into chaos, and the partygoers set out to find Beth.

That setup gives Cloverfield a human scale. It’s a Godzilla movie filtered through a handful of young adults trying to cross a city they know, with a camera they were already using. Rob and his friends first spot an explosion in the distance from a rooftop. Having lived in New York myself, I recognize the vibe: a casual night above the street, watching the city go by. Then the blast sends chunks of flaming debris hurtling toward them. The shock lands because the moment starts out so ordinary.

A shaky camera with a clear view of the story

The footage throughout Cloverfield is shaky. That style felt dated even in 2008, but that’s also the point. The film stays coherent enough to keep the geography and the stakes clear, and its breakneck pace does wonders. At just 85 minutes, it has little time to get bogged down in the format’s limitations or anything resembling mythology. We never get a good look at the monster as it rampages through the city. The focus stays on humans struggling to survive as explosions rock the streets around them.

Early in the film, the severed head of the Statue of Liberty lands in the street nearby. Everybody whips out their phones and starts recording rather than, I don’t know, running away screaming. That behavior is far more likely in 2026 than it was in 2008, and seeing it then felt almost comical. In hindsight, Abrams’ choice looks prescient.

The film’s biggest strain is just as obvious. Why would you keep filming while a monster tears through Manhattan and puts your own safety at risk? Hud (T.J. Miller), the party’s designated cameraman, thinks he caught the monster on camera early on and decides to keep recording. It’s a convenient reason, but it gives the footage a little purpose beyond the movie’s need for a camera. As the crisis grows, the impulse to document the impossible starts to feel believable.

What stays with me most is how much Rob and Beth’s relationship matters without taking over the story. His decision to leave New York for a new job has driven them apart, and it probably explains why he didn’t pursue anything after their one-night stand. The disaster gives them a reason to find each other again, and the film lets the romance tug at the heartstrings just enough. As they face the end together, their story adds an ache to the spectacle without slowing it down.

For more on the series, Polygon has a piece titled In defense of the Cloverfield franchise.

I love Cloverfield. I enjoy the other movies bearing its name, too, even if they don’t feel coherently connected in any legitimate way, and yes, that includes Cloverfield Paradox. But where do you go after a found-footage movie that makes a Godzilla-style citywide rampage feel this immediate and personal? Cloverfield‘s best trick is that it never gives us the whole picture. It gives us just enough to feel what it would be like to be there.

Source: Polygon