Fun With Viral Marketing

If you’ve had a chance to see “Transformers,” you also got to see a trailer for a curious little movie codenamed “Cloverfield.” The brief glimpse Rickey caught was of a party interrupted by huge fireball erupting in downtown Manhattan and the ensuing panic. This of course provided Rickey with the opportunity to gleefully yell “too soon!” and then chuckle to himself quietly.

Anyhow, that trailer has launched one of those newfangled online puzzle thingies that the kids seem to be quite fond of these days. And us too. You see, “Lost” isn’t running any viral campaigns at the moment, so Rickey needs something to fill the time. So dust off your trusty decoder ring, because links to the two sites running the game can be found here and here. And, by the way, did we mention that this “Cloverfield” flick is being produced by the same folks who made “Lost”?

If you start poking around, you’ll catch on pretty quick that the movie appears to be about something Lovecraftian (this is a word Rickey’s been dying to use since his 8th grade English lit class). Here’s one of the quotes from the site:

"The great cycle, the beginning and the end, turns just as the plans of the gods turn once again to the world of men. And they will come upon the earth only after the skies rain down fire and the very earth itself is made to shake and the great cities of men fall into ruins. Their plans are set and their purpose is clear; they come for war."

Indeed, if Rickey was a gambling man (and he is, but an exceedingly poor one) he’d wager that the cause of all that hubbub in the trailer is H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu. You know, Cthulhu, the fictional horror monster known for invoking abject terror due to its appearance, size, and all-around scary looks.

This of course leads us to really the only reason Rickey started blathering about this “Cloverfield” trailer in the first place: the McSweeney’s article “The Calls of Cthulhu.” If you skipped over all the stuff up above, definitely go ahead and read that piece. It’s fantastic. Oh yeah, and hooray for Hollywood making movies about ancient gods tearing lower New York City asunder. Enjoy the weekend folks.