Paramount’s ‘Cloverfield’ packs cheap thrill

Abrams and director Matt Reeves, his longtime buddy and collaborator, used high-end special effects houses to create the reptilian monster.

But to save money, you mostly get quick glimpses of the monster — a head here, a tail there — and a ton of horrified folks stumbling through New York streets as things rumble around them. (O.K., so Reeves says there is "something scary about things you don't see.")

Borrowing from The Blair Witch Project
Where the real hit-in-the-making genius of "Cloverfield" shines is in its marketing campaign, which was brilliantly designed to build suspense by giving audiences just a hint of what it was about. There was one big "Cloverfield" sighting — a theatrical trailer that ran right before screenings of Paramount's Spielberg-produced blockbuster, "Transformers."

But the trailer was more teaser than commercial and didn't even show the film's title. Pretty soon, the studio was leaking snippets of their flick to online sites, much as Artisan Entertainment did in 1999 with a low-budget horror film called "The Blair Witch Project." That film, which pioneered a new, camcorder verité style, was made for $350,000 or so and went on to gross $140 million.

Abrams describes "Cloverfield" as "a Cameron Crowe movie meets Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project." I'm not going to tell you that "Cloverfield" will have anywhere near the profitability of "The Blair Witch Project." Few films have. And with its share of stomach-wrenching bloodiness, "Cloverfield" may not be a date movie. But it does show what Hollywood can do when it puts its mind to watching its pennies instead of signing stars. And other studios can do it as well when they put their minds to it.

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Last year, Warner Bros. (TWX) turned a nifty profit with its computer-generated action flick 300, which it made for $65 million and sent off to a $211 million U.S. box office. Again: no stars, just plenty of computer-generated backdrops.

It all depends on how you measure success. I'm figuring Paramount may not have a $200 million box office on their hands. (If they thought it would be bigger, they wouldn't have released it in January.) But Abrams and friends have created a film that is a raucous, head-rattling thrill ride of a flick. And they did it for less than what Will Smith will report to the IRS for his role in "I Am Legend."

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