UPDATED: J.J. Abrams movie trailer offers glimpse of something spooky

Sounds like Godzilla; styled like Blair Witch.

by John P. Meyer

UPDATES posted at article's end:

When I attended an opening-day screening of Transformers this Tuesday, I - along with everyone else in the theater - was hyper-intrigued by the mysterious movie trailer for an unnamed JJ Abrams film that preceded the feature.

Yes, I know the link gets you only a still closeup of the frightened faces of two women, along with a vidcam date imprint of 01/18/2008 12:36A. The trailer itself doesn't provide much further information - we are left in the dark, for heaven's sake, on even the title of the film.

If you plan on attending a showing of Transformers any time soon, just make sure you're seated in time to view the previews so you can catch this spooky thing, and READ NO FURTHER. For those not planning to take in the bashing robot opus (and, in retrospect, I'm thinking you might want to do so just for a chance to catch this trailer on the big screen), here's what you won't see:

Shaky-cam footage (as if from a hand-held video camera) of a party in progress; it's a going-away fete for some guy's roommate, and the apartment's full of your run-of-the-mill happy young urbanites drinking with abandon and making comments to the camera. Suddenly, there's a sound like structural steel being mangled and a distant (though not terribly distant) rumbling and everything starts to shake: earthquake? We get a quick glimpse of a TV screen where a news anchor is talking about numerous telephone reports coming in to their New York offices about roaring noises; then things become more chaotic as people run out onto the terraced roof to see for themselves what's up. The handy cam zooms in on an exploding building several blocks away; people scream; fireballs stream towards them and everyone (including the camera person) runs for the stairwell. Another of those unearthly extended howls (metal? beast?). The scene picks up again in the street where a guy says "It's alive - it's HUGE!". At that point a massive chunk of debris hits the street nearby and the shaken camera person aims at it; it's the severed head of the Statue of Liberty.

Fade to an almost empty screen with only "01/18/2009" and "produced by J.J. Abrams." End of trailer.

If you google-news "JJ Abrams" you'll come up with numerous references to the creepy trailer and the amazingly well-covered-up film which it (sort of) introduces. The latest information (from FirstShowing.net) offers this much:

* The project is known (in production codeword parlance) as "Cloverfield."

* It's a monster movie. As in "big building-crushing creature."

* Insiders are referring to the monster as "The Parasite."

* Matt Reeves is directing from a script by Drew Goddard (a "Lost" and "Alias" writing veteran)

* The movie started filming in June; it's all being done using hand-held cameras, with the action shown from the viewpoint of a small group of "ordinary people" as a monster rampages through the city around them.

* The budget is $30 million, an incredibly low number for a major motion picture, particularly one involving the devastation of a big city by a monster.

* Actors solicited to appear in the film were given no scripts or scene summaries; they were simply asked, yes or no, whether they wanted to appear in the J.J. Abrams monster movie. Those who said "yes" include Michael Stahl-David, Odet Jasmin, Mike Vogel and Lizzy Kaplan.

As I post, a new story has appeared on New York Entertainment's website, which includes screenshots from the trailer - only it's a different version than the one I viewed, because it offers more extensive credit information. (Maybe this is an updated version - or one that's appearing in different cities?)

Stay tuned.

UPDATE 7/9: USA Today weighed in yesterday on the mysterious teaser/trailer, calling it "Hollywood's biggest experiment with reverse psychology" - referring to the fact that Paramount has fired up the imaginations of legions of filmgoers while steadfastly refusing to reveal any further details about the project. (Clever bastards.)

More importantly for those aching to know more about the subject matter, online trailer king Harry Knowles (Ain't It Cool News) notes that solutions to the puzzles posted at EthanHaasWasRight.com (one of two sites created by sadistic Paramount marketers to feed us further maddening tidbits) result in prophetic ramblings which mention Lovecraftian characters such as the mad prophet Alhazred - intimating that the monster ravaging New York might be none other than the great god Cthulhu himself, roused from his abyssal R'lyeh slumbers - perhaps by global warming and/or crop circles, who knows?

And finally, a return trip to the 1-18-08 website finds another still image has been posted.

Hot damn. This may or may not turn out to be an amazing film, but it's sure going to make life interesting until someone finally spills the magic beans.

IÄ! IÄ! CTHULHU FTAGHN!

UPDATE 7/10: Aargh. Those of us hoping for a Lovecraft tie-in have lost some foetid wind from our Innsmouth home port sails. Mr. J.J. Abrams himself dropped a line to Harry at Ain't It Cool News to let him (and thus everyone) know that we're totally off-base regarding the Ethan Haas puzzle sites - he (Abrams) states categorically that they "have nothing to do with us." Which means any reference to the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred found in those solutions is irrelevant in regard to the Cloverfield film project.

Which is not to say that Cthulhu will definitely not be rearing his tentacled head, but it does mean that there's absolutely no evidence indicating that he will.

The good news comes when Abrams reveals that there are, indeed, web sites out there in cyburbia relating to the movie - but no one has (as far as he knows) found them yet or made the connection.

UPDATE 7/13: A third picture has appeared on the 1-18-08 website, and it looks bad for New York (see embedded image). The date/time stamp indicates the action here is occurring at 12:48 - 12 minutes following the snap of the two women's horrified faces which was the first image posted on the site.

More entertaining (wouldn't take much, you say?): a poster named Rachel Syme at Radar Online has summarized the "action" thus far, including in her report a hilarious video analysis by some guy who has delved into the material in far greater depth than it probably makes sense to do so. You be the judge. (Be advised: the video's author is both pompous and a bad reader.)

UPDATE 7/21: Things have quieted down a bit on internet movie sites in regard to the Cloverfield production (e.g., if you Google News the topic and sort by date there are no new items of any substance since Rafe Telsch's Cinema Blend summary of July 18). Which leads us to these items of interest:

* There's been a fourth still posted to the 1-18-08 website, showing a time stamp of 1:24 a.m. (38 minutes after the last pic on display). In this shot we clearly see (in addition to a couple of startled civilians running towards the camera with a great deal of abandon) a camo-dressed military chap wielding a service rifle of some sort; he's looking back over his shoulder in the direction of the presumed threat (whatever that might be). All very dramatic.

* Ain't It Cool's Moriarty, in the midst of a rant about other writers claiming his scoops for their own, drops some additional hard info, to wit: the movie will play out in the form of a flashback, starting with cleanup crews going through the rubble and finding a video camera, which they discover has a tape inside that they then play back. It's this tape that makes for the meat of the movie.

* Farrah Weinstein at the New York Post reports that Abrams, along with director Reeves and a couple of the actors (Blake Lively and Mike Vogel), shot some scenes for the film (with hand-held video cameras) at Deno's Wonder Wheel on Coney Island. One of the owners of the ride - who was consulted by the filmmakers in order for them to gain permission for filming - claims that he was told the movie will be "... about an alien that wipes out all of New York City." The footage shot at the Wonder Wheel will serve as day-before background to the apocalyptic events which follow. The Post story also identifies the reporter seen in the trailer who makes the announcement about the "thunderous, roaring sound" heard by folks calling into the station: it's Roma Torre from NY1, who claims she knew (knows) little about the film, but what she does know is off-limits because she's signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Across the net, mavens speculate that more meaty details will emerge during next week's Comic-Con in San Diego, which Abrams is purportedly scheduled to attend - although the Comic-Con site does not mention him as a "special guest." One thing is certain, given the level of secrecy he's been able to maintain around the Cloverfield project thusfar: he'll be telling people only as much as he wants them to know. He's clever that way.

UPDATE 7/26: No one's telling me they're getting tired of these rather silly little viral updates, so I'm continuing to post them. (Hell, I may do so even if someone tells me they're getting tired of them: that's just the kind of guy I am.) Frankly, I find this whole mysterious leaking-it-slowly campaign to be a refreshing change of movie-marketing pace.

You'll note here the Paramount-released teaser poster (via Film School Rejects). This was also trotted out by EW in an article which blurts "Secrets revealed!", the body of which reveals only some things that the monster of the movie will definitely NOT be, including a parasite of some sort and the much-ballyhooed Voltron.

More intriguingly, Greg Grunberg (the psychic police detective on "Heroes" and longtime J.J. Abrams pal) tells Cinema Blend that he'll actually be appearing in the movie, though not in a majorly-identifiable way.

Amusingly, both Rotten Tomatoes and EW speculated in day-old stories that the title of the film might turn out to be "Monstrous"; however, late this afternoon (July 26) the man himself, Mr. J.J. Abrams, told crowds at Comic-Con that the movie would definitely NOT be titled "Monstrous." (This per MTV.com and BuddyTV). Furthermore, he says that he got the idea for the film when he and his son were visiting Japan, and he thought it would be cool if Americans had their own version of a Godzilla to kick the urban butts of their major cities and such.

Sounds good to me.