Frenzy over movie

IT has no star names. It has no known plot. It has no confirmed title, though there is plenty of speculation. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. It is the next Lost.

Despite, or rather because of, the paucity of detail, the film has got cinemagoers, pundits and bloggers enthralled.
One thing we do know: the producer is J J Abrams, co-creator of Lost, the cult TV drama that made an art of keeping fans guessing.
His switch to the big screen, however, threatens to make the series about plane crash survivors stranded on a tropical island look straighter than a children’s bedtime story.
The intrigue started with what has been dubbed the greatest movie trailer ever made: shown before screenings of Transformers in America, it threatened to steal the sci-fi blockbuster’s thunder.
In a fashionable New York apartment, a farewell party for ‘Rob’ features young New Yorkers as seen through a hand-held camera.
Suddenly there is a loud noise and the lights go out.
Car alarms sound, women scream and, amid general pandemonium, partygoers rush outside to witness a giant fireball mushrooming into the night sky.
Then a terrifying object hurtles out of nowhere and ricochets down the street: the severed head of the Statue of Liberty.
The shaky, low-resolution camera style has been used before, in films such as The Blair Witch Project, but its combination with big budget special effects is more reminiscent of breaking news captured by mobile phone cameras.
The scenes of fire raining from the skies above Manhattan inevitably evoke the September 11 terror attacks, and the intimate home movie style resonates with a generation accustomed to user-generated websites such as YouTube.
The coup de grace from Abrams is that, having grabbed audiences by the throat, he chooses not to reveal even the title of the film, finishing with only the release date – 1-18-08, as in January 18 next year – and brief credits. When it comes to generating buzz, he has proved that less is more.
As with Lost, Abrams has scattered a few other tantalising clues to be seized on and dissected.
In an even more explicit 9/11 reference, a publicity poster shows a decapitated Statue of Liberty and palls of smoke rising above shattered skyscrapers in lower Manhattan.
A website named after the release date, 1-18-08.com, merely contains five photographs, some of partygoers and also more images of terror, including women emerging from a dust cloud. Abrams has said that there are more sites, but no one has yet traced them.
Rumoured titles for the film - scripted by Lost writer Drew Goddard and with a modest budget of £15 million – have included 1-18-08, Monstrous, Slusho and Cloverfield, the name of a Los Angeles street where Abrams has an office.
The mix of 9/11, edgy video, Abrams’s reputation, an air of mystery and the lightning rod of the Internet has produced a viral marketing dream.
Just as users take it on themselves to write the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, so fans have banded together to solve this mystery, doing the publicists’ work for them by creating an avalanche of unofficial websites and blogs which are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.
The trailer’s hand-held camera style has made it a natural fit for YouTube, attracting video responses in which people analyse its significance and debate numerous theories.
These have included: the film sees Godzilla attack Manhattan (Abrams has said, “We need our own Godzilla’); it is based on horror writer HP Lovecraft’s tale of a seafaring monster; it is an adaptation of Voltron, the 80s cartoon about ancient robotic lions who defend Earth from attack; it is about an alien called the Parasite; it is a direct spin-off from Lost.”
It is certainly all meat and drink to Paramount Pictures’ marketing department.
Chris Hassell, director of Ralph, a digital design agency, which designed a viral email campaign to promote the TV series Dexter, said: “The web now plays a massive part in marketing movies, but this takes it to another level.
“Abrams has an interested following, so they’ve got the right audience: just drip out a few nuggets of information, get it mentioned on popular film sites, then sit back and watch people promote your film even though they don’t know what it is.”
Dan Jolin, features editor of the film magazine Empire, said: “The problem with this approach is that it tends to build up expectations. Look at Snakes on a Plane: the anticipation was more enjoyable than the film itself.”
This might give Abrams food for thought. He has admitted: “Obviously, if the movie doesn’t kick some massive ass, who gives a rat’s about what’s online?”

By David Smith