Cloverfield, or whatever... factsheet

OK, I've gotten a bit wrapped up in this Cloverfield business. Cloverfield seems to be the primary codename for the untitled JJ Abrams monster movie due out on 1-18-08.

Catch-up: The teaser trailer for this movie was shown before the Transformers movie and showed us a going away party for 'Rob', who is leaving for Japan, being interrupted by a monstrous howl, an earthquake, and a power disruption. The partygoers head for the roof to try and see what's up. A monstrous explosion shakes the land once again, raining debris for miles around. The panicked partyers head indoors presumably for shelter, but then rush out into the street where another howl is heard followed by a strange throaty whistling noise. At this point an object can be seen hurtling toward the partyers. The object crashes into a building and continues down into the street, smashing parked cars and coming to rest in the middle of the road. At this point we see that the object is the head of the Statue of Liberty. The teaser ends with the date "1-18-08" and some production credits.

As it happens, that date turned up as a website, 1-18-08.com. This site featured a photograph of two women, side by side, framed in such a way as to show only half of each woman's face. They are looking upward and appear to be stunned by whatever it is they are seeing. Eventually, and as I write this, a total of 5 photos have gone up on this site. These photos are not static images. They are displayed using Flash so that the viewer may rearrange the photos and even flip them over. All of the photos are time and date stamped. Two of the photos are from the party and the other three photos appear to have been taken during the monster attack. There are messages written on the back of the two party photos including which gave up some names of the other characters. Someone was wise enough to look for those names on MySpace and turned up 7 characters, all linking to one another and no-one else.

So, I've been trying to monitor their MySpace blogs, comments, pics, and video pages and noticed that some of the profiles were either placed some time ago or they were made to appear as if they were placed some time ago. Here's a quick link list to their profiles:
MySpace.com - www.myspace.com/jamielascano - Jamie Lascano's name found on back of pic.
MySpace.com - www.myspace.com/robbyhawkins - Rob Hawkins was going to Japan.
MySpace.com - www.myspace.com/beth_mcintyre - Beth McIntyre seems to be Rob's girl.
MySpace.com - www.myspace.com/lily_ford - Lily Ford seems to be JJ Hawkins' girl.
MySpace.com - www.myspace.com/hudsonplatt - Hudson "Hud" Platt is a friend.
MySpace.com - www.myspace.com/jj_hawkins - Jason "JJ" "Hawk" is Rob's half-brother?
MySpace.com - www.myspace.com/marlenadiamond - Marlena Diamond is a friend.
In the last couple of days there have been new friends added to some of these profiles along with new comments and a blog entry by Hud (a fan of comic books) about the X-Men.

To backtrack a little bit, there was another clue in the teaser trailer, and possibly some yet to be discovered clues, mainly, "Slusho!" Slusho is a drink that has appeared in Abrams' show "Alias" and possibly in "Lost" as well. The site slusho.jp seems to hold a lot of 'Cloverfield' related information that has yet to be properly interpreted.

Speaking of interpretation... a lot of really silly ideas have been mentioned by people who have misinterpreted available information.

• Talk of lions lead to the idea this was a Voltron movie, which it is not.
  
• Some believe this is a movie about 3 biblical monsters (Behemoth on land, Leviathan in the sea, & Ziz in the air) based on Slusho information about sea creatures and whales (Leviathan) along with a duck (Ziz) and a horse (Behemoth) and Slusho page backgrounds to go along with each. While there isn't enough available information to completely discredit this rumor there is an equal lack of information to confirm it.
  
• Based on the '3 monsters' rumor others have guessed at a "Rampage" movie, from the old video arcade game. Again, I'm really certain this is not a Rampage movie.
• Finally, Chthulhu fans seemed to think there was some possibility this was a movie based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, but anyone really familiar with his work would see that what we know of this movie bears no real resemblance to Lovecraft's stories.
  

A lot of other sites have cropped up pretending to be connected to the untitled JJ Abrams project, but most have been quickly and easily exposed as fakes. I won't bother mentioning questionable items here because such posers simply don't deserve any sort of recognition.

Abrams stated at Comic-Con that 'we' should have a monster icon like Godzilla. Therefore, my guess is that this is a completely original monster, as original as giant monsters can be nowadays, and may have roots in anything and/or everything mentioned above, but this will be a new look at whatever it turns out to be.