In addition to drawing from the decades of monster cinema, the creators of 2008’s Cloverfield found inspiration in the animal kingdom when designing their destructive creature. Afforded unique freedom due to the tight secrecy surrounding the film’s release, as even audiences knew little to nothing about the film, the VFX crew was able to create a Kaiju-like creature never seen in a movie before, incorporating elements from various wildlife inspirations create their movie monster.
J.J. Abrams was riding high in the mid-2000s. A proven talent on the small screen for years, he had just directed Mission Impossible III and was working on Paramount’s reboot of Star Trek when he signed on, in secret, to produce the monster flick, written and directed by his friends and proteges, Drew Goddard and Matt Reeves, respectively. Utilizing a marketing strategy similar to the Blair Witch Project, everything about the project was hush-hush. It had no title, which would change countless times as the film went through production and, somehow, Paramount was able to keep the project a secret from the online community, closely controlling when and how information about the film would be released.
Inspired by toys he glimpsed during a toy shopping trip in Japan with his son, Abrams and his colleagues tapped the legendary Phil Tippett Studio to develop visual effects for the film. To design the creature itself, director Matt Reeves enlisted concept artist Neville Page. Not wanting their film’s threat to be a Godzilla-esque giant monster, the team had to think differently as design phase evolved. As gargantuan and destructive as he may be, Clover, as the rampaging monster would eventually come to be called, was conceived of as immature and suffering from separation anxiety, a lost child lashing out at his scary and unfamiliar new surroundings.
Cloverfield’s Monster Was Inspired By The Animal Kingdom
Strange as it may sound, Page wanted his creature to be tethered to reality. Seeking a biological rationale and a semblance of plausibility for every aspect of the design, he turned to wildlife for inspiration. Squid-like tentacles were a part of some early concepts, but eventually dropped. It’s face, mouth, and teeth are meant to resemble the piranha or anglerfish. Like frogs and toads, it has mucous membranes on the sides of it head where ears should be.
As if the creature itself wasn’t quite enough, it was infested with thousands of dog-sized alien “fleas” – parasites with 10 legs consisting of spider-like double jointed limbs and an ant’s pincers that could dislodge from their host monster to wreak further destruction and horrors at street level. The beast’s “lost toddler gone bezerk” psychology was modeled after that of rampaging elephants, as was its gray-white skin. Playing up the idea that the monster is acting out of fear, it was given the eyes of a “spooked horse” at the suggestion of Reeves.
All of these elements came together for a creature and a cinematic experience unlike anything seen before. Audiences had never witnessed an on-screen alien invasion quite like this. From the head of the statue of liberty rolling and bouncing down lower Manhattan, to the horrifying delayed effects of the alien flea bites, Cloverfield was tremendously effective. The shaky cam techniques and bystander with a camera format was especially effective in the context of post-9/11 America, which added to the popularity of certain sub-genres of horror. Found footage films had been around for a while, but never on this scale before.
Next: How All The Cloverfield Movies Connect
