Cloverfield wouldn’t receive a sequel until 8 years after the original’s release. Without hesitation, I booked tickets to see it on opening day.
10 Cloverfield Lane (dir. Dan Trachenberg, 2) is honestly a true marvel to behold. Some may argue it’s juggling of suspenseful thriller and sci-fi flick is flawed, especially when you realise that it wasn’t intended to be part of the franchise.
THE ARG
The sequel’s ARG focuses on one of the characters seen in the new film, Howard Stambler played by John Goodman. With MySpace now seen as culturally outdated, the Tagruato.jp website was updated with a new employee of the month section, which portrayed Howard – establishing to fans of the ARG that he worked at the company and thus was tied to the first film’s universe. After many finding websites (including the now defunct radioman70.com and FunAndPrettyThings.com), unlocked the access to see chat logs showing Howard’s attempts at communicating with his daughter and telling her to get to his bunker after she’d been taken to Chicago by his ex-wife. Howard, involved in a secret project by Tagruato in the past, is led to believe the events of the film are due to a nuclear attack carried out by the Soviets. We, the audience, know that’s not the case.
REALITY OR FICTION?
Without a doubt, this ARG was more in-depth and immersive than it’s predecessor. A text based survival game was made, after someone survived 1600 in-game days the real world location of a locker in Chicago was revealed, with a cell phone with voicemails from Howard found inside.
A ‘survival kit’ found in Louisiana which contained jigsaw pieces that were missing from the same puzzle seen in the film. Even an expired Craigslist ad was found of Howard’s ex-wife selling antique spoons, and allowed a correspondence to be set up with her.
10 Cloverfield Lane’s ARG is a masterclass in marketing with and will undoubtedly go down in the ARG history books, it’s such a shame that the franchise eventually took a tumble.
To conclude in part 3.
Part 1
further reading:
An article that gives a surface level look at the ARG
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