When Cloverfield 2 revisits an alien-ravaged Earth, its central creature may have to evolve in response to monster movie trends. Directed by Matt Reeves and produced by J. J. Abrams in 2008, the original Cloverfield was a critical and commercial success and became a landmark entry in the found footage horror craze kicked off by The Blair Witch Project nearly a decade prior. It follows the videotaped tribulations of a group of twenty-somethings as they fight to survive when New York City is terrorized by a giant, extraterrestrial monster, informally known as Clover.

Under the supervision of Abrams, two more obliquely related science fiction films have thus far been released in the series. Although they each reference Clover, the subsequent entries in the "Cloververse," 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox, have strayed from clear definitions of monster movies, being more akin to a psychological thriller and a sci-fi mystery, respectively. Beyond its narrative diversity, the series' marketing became something of calling card, with the original sporting an extensive viral marketing campaign and The Cloverfield Paradox conversely being released on Netflix immediately after the premier of its trailer during the Super Bowl.

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The announcement of a direct sequel comes more than a decade after the original Cloverfield's release, and creature design in monster movies has evolved noticeably in the interim. There seem to be two possible ways in which the filmmakers could respond to this. To keep with the times, the design could pivot to allow for the increased visual clarity that Godzilla and King Kong of the MonsterVerse and the kaiju of the Pacific Rim films have been moving toward, with more distinct colors and silhouettes. Clover's spindly physique was uniquely well suited to found footage, making its fleeting, incomplete appearances seem strange and unnatural. But it has been announced that the sequel will not be found footage, and such a design may not work as well when seen by a more objective style of cinematography. After all, it is perhaps telling that Clover never really appeared on any of the first movie's posters.

Cloverfield Monster

Alternatively, the sequel could push for an even stranger design, leaning into the eldritch aspects of the creature. The glancing, peripheral place of the supernatural horror elements in the two subsequent Cloverfield movies already suggests this (although they admittedly may not be treated as canon). And because the new film won't be found footage, a more bizarre, ineffable monster could be an effective way of capturing that sense of disorientation in a more modern way.

While found footage undeniably continues to have place in modern horror, it has naturally settled into smaller, more intimate stories, with works like Host analyzing the effects of technology on modern existence, closer in spirit to Paranormal Activity. This is not dissimilar to the approach of the original Cloverfield, which focused heavily on the shell-shocked, ground-level experiences of its characters in the wake of a monstrous attack. But in the likely event that the new film features the monster, it will evidently have to achieve this perspective in a different way, and a creature that alienates through both its size and its strangeness would be an excitingly unique way to do so.

As has been noted, the design of the Cloverfield monster had already been altered somewhat by the time it, or one of its ilk, reappeared in The Cloverfield Paradox, so there is certainly some leeway in how it can be presented. What's more, the implications of that film's conclusion mean that the sequel has a great amount of freedom in reinterpreting the monster in potential parallel universes, an aesthetic choice that could signify a great deal about the future direction of the Cloverfield franchise.

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