Editorials
The Mystery of ‘Cloverfield’: 10 Years Later
Paramount Pictures announced yet another shift in release for the next installment of perhaps the weirdest and most secretive sci-fi franchise in cinematic history, the Cloverfield series. The J.J. Abrams-produced American monster movie by way of found footage became an instant success upon release on January 18, 2008, yet it took another eight years for a follow-up. Except it wasn’t exactly the sequel audiences were expecting. Instead of the giant, mysterious beast that destroyed nearly all of New York City, we got a claustrophobic thriller with a sci-fi twist. It too raked in the profits, solidifying Paramount and Bad Robot’s plans to unleash a series of films set in the Cloverfield universe. With not just one, but possibly two Cloverfield films set to release this year, we look back at the history of the Cloverfield series, the future of the series, and the Alternate Reality Game that connects them.
Sprouted from a small seedling of an idea that Abrams had while visiting a toy store in Japan with his son, Paramount secretly greenlit Cloverfield, written by Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) and directed by Matt Reeves (Let Me In). The entire film hinged on its secrecy; not even the cast knew what they were auditioning for. The actors weren’t allowed to read the script until they’d actually signed on for the movie.
Then there was the marketing. Attached to the theatrical release of Transformers in July 2007 was the first teaser for Cloverfield, and it fully lived up to the definition of the word. Enough was shown to let the viewer know there was something beyond the party in the scenes featured and that it was big and pissed off. But Paramount opted to not reveal the movie’s title, only the date 1.18.08. It wasn’t until November of that year, in a teaser attached to the theatrical release of Beowulf, that Paramount would finally clue audiences into the film’s title. The speculation ran wild. Would this be tied into Abrams’ hit series Lost? Would it be a new Godzilla movie?
While Bad Robot and Paramount remained frustratingly tight-lipped about the project, Paramount doled out clues in the form of the Alternate Reality Game, or ARG. This highly intricate and cryptic ARG enhanced the film in a way that had never been done before; months of clues dispersed across the internet built a backstory for diehard players that fleshed out some of the narrative that the film itself never had time to answer. The biggest of which was that Japanese mining company Tagruato, and its Chuai drilling station in the Atlantic Ocean near New York City was ground zero for the monster’s attack preceding the events of the film. Most important of all, aside from insight to the creature’s origins, is that Tagruato is a large corporation with subsidiaries. One of which was Slusho!, which was featured in Cloverfield as Rob’s going away party was centered around his job promotion to vice president of marketing for the company. Tagruato also developed paraffin wax via their ParafFun! Wax Distributors branch, deep-sea genetic research via Yoshida Medical Research, and advanced technology via Bold Futura.
Why is that last subsidiary important? Because on January 15, 2016, a mysterious trailer featuring the word “Cloverfield” in its title would begin the speculation anew. A month later, suspicions that we’d finally get another Cloverfield came with the launch of the next ARG game. This one, also centered on the Tagruato Corporation, fixated on subsidiary Bold Futura. And who would be featured as a key employee of the subsidiary? John Goodman’s character Howard Stambler. Though much shorter than the original ARG game, this iteration would give key backstory to Howard and the relationship with the daughter he so doted upon in 10 Cloverfield Lane, and his role in the company.
As for the film itself, it proved to be nothing at all like its predecessor. While both Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane feature lead protagonists fleeing from relationships, their journeys are vastly different. From New York City to a rural underground bunker, and giant demolition monster to a paranoid human monster, it doesn’t seem to have much in common besides a moniker. Until you get to the end, and Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has to contend with monsters of an extraterrestrial variety. Oh, and the clues revealed in the ARG placing this movie in the same universe as Cloverfield, though Abrams has stated that it exists in a different timeline.
Why did it take so long to come up with a sequel, though, and why was it only connected in the loosest of ways? While Abrams had always intended a sequel, especially thanks to fan demand, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim and Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla sort of made his original plan to create an American giant monster obsolete. So it reshaped how this franchise would continue, for the better I think.
The third entry in the Cloverfield universe was announced in the ARG for the avid followers. Well, sort of. The ARG for 10 Cloverfield Lane revealed a sound clip from the International Space Station, which had many looking for the next entry to take place in space. Then came the announcement that God Particle, a space thriller/horror film written by Oren Uziel and Doug Jung would be the next entry, to be released on February 24, 2017. Like 10 Cloverfield Lane, God Particle wasn’t one written with Cloverfield in mind but retrofitted into the universe. Die-hard fans of the ARG game geared up to participate, and then waited for its arrival. And waited. And waited. The release date then shifted to October 27, 2017, then to February 2, 2018, before an official announcement for April. While it still remains to be seen if and when the ARG game will commence (I think it might a month before theatrical release, considering Tagruato corps’ website has undergone recent changes), I’d like to speculate that another Tagruato subsidiary makes its entrance in the franchise. Namely ParafFun! Wax Distributors, since God Particle (or whatever it will be renamed) is set on a space station and revolves around a particle accelerator and paraffin wax is used in moderating neutrons.
Tagruato’s footage from the Atlantic seabed in Cloverfield’s ARG
While we only have months to discover just how much the currently unnamed and formerly titled God Particle will tie into the Cloverfield universe, there’s yet another potential franchise entry to consider: Overlord. Another joint venture between Abrams’ Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures, Overlord is a World War II horror film that will follow the story of two American soldiers behind enemy lines on D Day, as they discover the Nazis are using supernatural forces against them. Set for release on October 26, 2018, there are elements there that would suggest this could be another Cloverfield. Same two companies behind the series, similar genres, and a potential connection to Tagruato, considering the fictional company was founded the final year of World War II, in 1945.
Cloverfield took the box office by storm, in large part thanks to the clever and secretive nature of both Abrams and Paramount’s clever marketing. More than that, it was a fantastic film. From Rob’s human relationships to the creepy parasites that dropped from the creature, Cloverfield was a unique entry in the American monster pantheon. When the long-anticipated sequel felt obsolete thanks to similar films being released, Abrams and Paramount adapted and shifted, instead choosing to produce scripts with similar themes and retrofitting them into the same universe. There’s something inherently exciting about never being able to fully anticipate the type of film you’re going to get in the Cloverfield series, or even what type of monster, sometimes even plural. You can count on similar themes among the protagonists at the center of the film, and that it will be a genre film in some way. Most of all, though, is that you can count on evil Tagruato Corporation to be behind it all.
With two stellar films released so far, and a vast potential ahead, I can’t wait to see where the Cloverfield universe brings us next. Ten years after the release of Cloverfield, it’s still as much of an enigma as it was in 2008.
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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