The monster in “Cloverfield”, up until a clear shot late in the movie, seems to look different from different angles. The glimpses we see could be a spider, a dinosaur, the Rancor, or some Lovecraftian obscenity. In a country where most citizens know surprisingly little about the September 11 hijackers, the undefined monster is the most frightening. Just as a significant percentage of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein orchestrated the attacks, “Cloverfield” doesn’t give us the origin of the monster. It’s big and it hates us, and that’s all the information we’re going to get.
Ultimately, “Cloverfield” may turn out to be the first successful movie to deal with September 11. Moviegoers have rejected dramatizations of the actual events, and they’ve rejected major stars looking sad while they think about what happened on that day. For the average American, it was a time of chaos and pain and not knowing where to go or how to feel.
