Fear of the Unknown

Some people consider Cloverfield to be the best monster film in the 21st century so far. When the film was first starting to be adverstised, it went through a series of fake titles. The trailers left the viewer confused and intrigued: they showed horrible scenes of 'something' attacking New York City. The hype was very intense, as word of mouth and media coverage/ monster speculation swept America. No one had any idea what the movie was about. There were no stars in it and the director unknown. So how did the movie do so well?

The basic human instinct of the fear of the unknown. We are in a time where the world is in turmoil. Recent terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq/ the war on terror has most people living in constant fear of the next thing that will happen. This is because we have no idea what will happen, we are scared of what we do not know and try to do whatever we can to figure it out. This is, in my opinion, why Cloverfield did so well in the box office. The film had good reviews and had Americans buzzing. However, the question of what exactly the monster is was never answered. But at least we went out and tried to find out.