On our way to pick up our tickets, we overheard a group of 4 young men coming down the escalator from the upper movie floors at Hoyts in Melbourne Central "We have to tell everyone" they were saying "Do not to see this movie!" they raised their voices "People need to be warned!" I chuckled and wondered to Fox if they were referring to Cloverfield.
Standing on the "Red Carpet" to pick up our tickets, we heard them again, this time the comments were seeded with the name of the film "I KNEW you were talking about Cloverfield!" I pointed hard at them, catching their eye. They came over to us "Are you here for Cloverfield?" "Do NOT see this movie!!" they were quite enthusiastic and implored us not to see 27 Dresses instead.
"It's the worst film I've ever seen!" one of them explained.
"C'mon.. how bad can it be?" we asked.
The tallest young man said "Look, put it this way: do you *like* movies??"
I suggested it could hardly be the "worst movie" he'd ever seen, had he not seen Phantom of the Opera.
One of the young men thought a moment and then said "Ok, Cloverfield isn't' *that* bad."
And it wasn't that bad.
If you've been following the viral trail Cloverfield has been tracking over the internets, you too will have been hanging out for today and to see the film in cinemas.
I suppose the thing that surprised me most about this movie was it's lack of answers. It is not the culmination of the viral campaign, it is part of it. It's another, albeit big, clue in the Cloverfield puzzle.
While I am not sure this movie will go down in history as one of cinema's great achievements, I do think it's going to be a great big smash hit and a shining example of how to blend media (communication channels? technologies? streams?) to create a movie experience that bleeds well and truly off the edges of the cinema screen.