Man, nuthin’ like a near decade-old reference to a independent horror movie to get things going on a Monday morning, huh?

So, Cloverfield comes out this weekend and I’m pretty pumped. Surprisingly pumped, actually. Pumped, but cautious. The trailer looks good, but the shaky-cam captured by victims in the middle of all the action makes me wince a little. Plus, January is typically a dumping ground for the studios where they bury films they’re not all that proud of after the holiday rush. Either Cloverfield is looking to capitalize on the vacancy of quality films, or it’s a two-ton turkey itself. It could potentially be Snakes on a Plane for 2008.

Buzz, excitement and speculation have been surrounding this movie since last Autumn with everyone trying to figure out what tricks producer J.J. Abrams has up his sleeve. The Slusho campaign and the recent oil rig disaster fake news report viral campagins have tongues wagging as fans try to decipher their meaning. With a string of mind-bending “WTF!” successes on television with Alias and Lost, expectations are running high.

Abrams did the right thing by obscuring the monster in the trailers. It’s only whetted our appetite more. There was talk at one point if you would even get to see the monster at all in the movie. While that has since been discounted, I think it would have been the braver choice.

Cloverfield is clearly a 9/11 parable. Falling debris, mass confusion at the ground level, people looking up, throngs of people crossing the George Washington Bridge, the destruction of a national monument… all the keystone images are in place.

You could argue that any disaster movie set in New York at this point could be seen as a 9/11 parable and you wouldn’t be wrong. But what Abrams could have done with this – and, in my mind, been much more effective – is NOT show the monster.

There is no horror greater than the monsters that live in our imaginations. Anything we can conjure in our own minds – our own personal fear – is ten time more powerful than anything a filmmaker can give shape to on screen. What better way to contextually address the spectre of terrorism – this amorphous hate and violence against us – by refusing to define what it looks like?

That’s the artistic interpretation. Then again, the hard core geek in me REALLY wants to see what this bad boy looks like.

And then buy the action figure.