Cloverfield Poster Analysis

Creating a Sense of Unease: Cloverfield and the Fear of the Unknown There is so much that is left uncertain in life. In the real world, developing stories and the future are never perfectly clear. In film, however, narrative structure and key details can be left uncertain or unseen to create suspense or a sense of unease. The poster released before the opening of the film Cloverfield produced by Paramount Pictures in 2008. This poster released to promote Cloverfield creates a sense of unease using by using tactics that prey on the fear of the unknown or unseen that is found in film and everyday life in order to attract an audience for the film. The promotional poster for Cloverfield prominently features the Statue of Liberty in the foreground …show more content…
A promotional poster is made to convey a message about a film using only a single image. Since Cloverfield is a horror film, the poster was made to instill a sense of unease in the audience by using the public’s fear of uncertainty. The location and viewpoint of this poster was used to go along with this theme. Unlike they dynamic visuals of film, a poster is static, so the viewpoint of the poster, the lens through which we see the world has the ability to provide answers or raise questions. In this case, questions are raised as to what is happening in this alternate reality, this world that we have no control over. The film Rear Window is a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock that shows the perspective that a static viewpoint provides in a horror setting. Rear Window shows the world outside of a man’s window. Hitchcock had to create a set that immersed an audience as the poster had to create a world that drew an audience in. Hitchcock and his cinematographer Robert Burks created an entire courtyard resembling those found in New York City with realistic apartments where the plot of the movie could take place. Despite the daunting technical aspects of shooting on the massive set that they had created, Hitchcock and Burks were able to construct a cinematic masterpiece told from inside of a single room (Beach). The plot of this murder …show more content…
Though the destruction of the Statue of Liberty and the smoothed path in the water are subtle examples of this sort of framing, they show that the audience is witnessing a scene that was captured just too late. The smooth path in the water seems to be an anomaly. The scene of destruction almost calls for rough water to accompany it, but amidst the rough waves a path remains still, almost raised above the rest. It could seem as if something was lying just below the surface and moving toward the background of the scene, toward the destruction. In the foreground, the bending metal where Lady Liberty’s upper torso used to be leaves the audience wondering what could have been done to leave such a disaster in its