The attack on New York City depicted in Cloverfield was meant to be a metaphor for a real life terrorist attack on the city on September 11, 2001. The fear and the confusion felt by Americans, particularly New Yorkers, is reimagined as a terrifying an unexplained monster rising out of the ocean and wreaking havoc on the city. Here's a look at the connections between fiction and reality.
Cloverfield follows a group of New Yorkers at a going away party to see a friend off to a new job overseas. In the middle of the party, a massive and unexplained creature rises from the sea and rains terror down on the city. The horror movie follows the group of scared and confused friends as they fight, and ultimately fail, to survive the attack. Cloverfield's shaky-cam technique heightens the feelings of the movie's protagonists.
By tapping into a somewhat recent and terrifying moment in American history, director Matt Reeves and co-producer J.J. Abrams call forth a visceral fear within the audience. This made Cloverfield an even more effective horror movie, as viewers were alive for the events of 9/11, and therefore familiar with the feelings mimicked in the movie even though the characters were face-to-face with a fictional, otherworldly monster.
How Cloverfield Is A Metaphor For 9/11
In an interview with TIME, Abrams shares that Cloverfield is meant to be a sort of catharsis for the events of 9/11. During the terrorist attack, the enemy was hidden. However, this is juxtaposed against by showing Cloverfield's attack with a more visible monster. Horror movies have always been a safe way for the audience to experience fear in a way that allows them to be safe from any harm. With Cloverfield, audiences lived out their wildest fears, but came out the other side unscathed. Reeves and Abrams added a few concrete elements to really drive that metaphor home, such as Cloverfield's New York City setting and the shaky-cam style which mirrored the handheld videos shot in Iraq during the war.
Cloverfield's 9/11 metaphor follows a long-standing tradition in monster movies. Horror movies that feature monsters typically do so to act as an allegory for the current cultural anxiety. Zombie movies were born out of the anxiety around the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and even the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic has inspired a sub-genre of horror referred to as "Quar Horror." It's an idea that's been around for decades, as it's incredibly effective to scare audiences by recalling a frightening moment in time they've already lived through. Cloverfield successfully deploys that method, as its subject matter is not too on-the-nose to be insensitive, yet it's still scary. This makes Cloverfield the best 9/11 movie to date.