Whatever its flaws as a movie, "Cloverfield" seems to make an instructive case study in marketing. Not that I know anything about the subject. But as a consumer it was interesting to observe how I and others reacted to its presentation, from the first teaser trailer to the theater at the film's end.

The trailer was unconventional, especially for an action movie. Instead of a quick and flashy montage, it was the first chapter of the movie condensed. We saw the testimonials being given at the party, then the unearthly sound and brownout, going up to the roof, huge explosion, running down to the street, and then the big moment when the Statue of Liberty's head comes flying off a building and crashing onto the street. All the blogs linked to it and said things like "Now that's a trailer." The J.J. Abrams name and lack of a title added to the excitement.

Then there were the viral marketing websites, most of which turned out not to even have anything to do with the film, and the emergence of the title. The people behind the film originally denied that "Cloverfield" was the title, saying it was only a codename, but of course it did turn out to be the title, and people were surprisingly angry about this. The Wikipedia page says that they kept changing the title during this time.

From this point until the opening, I personally became rather tired of seeing more and more posters and ads featuring the decapitated Statue of Liberty. The shock of the image wore off pretty quickly and it had lost all impact for me.

I was pleasantly surprised when the movie opened and got pretty decent reviews. I didn't read any of them, but only looked at the rotten tomatoes score. I saw it on opening weekend because I didn't want to be tortured by the desire to read the reviews and commentary or accidentally hear about it from friends.

I'll skip over any commentary on the movie itself for the benefit of those who haven't seen it. At the end in the theater there was a curious mixture of applause and shouts of "WHAT?!" I think this reaction, along with everything else that happened before, showed the fundamental problem of this movie: all the hype and mystery made people expect a big reveal, a big idea behind the curtain. The teaser forced the question, What could do that? But whenever I thought about it, I realized that no answer could really live up to the expectations that had been built. Any attempt would either have to be a beloved franchise, like Voltron as some speculated, or be so outlandish that it would likely become the butt of a year's worth of jokes on Best Week Ever (though it probably will anyway).

A lot of art house films, and some recent mystery flicks, have made me accustomed to a complete lack of explanation for what happens in a story. But I'm sure a lot of people in the audience were expecting the part where at least something is explained and sorted out. Not that this is the only complaint they could have had. I think the movie had more things simultaneously wrong with it and good things going for it than any I've seen in a while.