Cloverfield SPOILERS: The Monster’s Birth, the Parasites, the Love Story

I’m marking this post with the big SPOILER tag, because it seems to be very spoilerific when it comes to knowing more about J.J. Abrams’ upcoming monster movie “Cloverfield” (opening barely two weeks from now, which explains the sudden flood of “Cloverfield” images and “leaks”), so if you don’t want to know anything more about the movie, I suggest you not continue reading. Oh, who are we kidding. If you didn’t want to know anymore, you wouldn’t be here now, would you? Continue on.

Slashfilm has got an assload of details scanned from the movie’s production notes, and I suggest heading over there now to read it, or you can just glean the excerpts of the more important points below.

It all begins with … a love story?

“We’re seeing the aftermath of two people who have longed to be together, and somehow finally come together, crosscut with this other event,” the director explains. “By going back and forth between these two pieces, you end up heightening the drama. By looking back at this relationship and what it could have been, the audience starts to put the pieces together as to why Rob is so eager to rescue her.”

About the monster’s origins:

The concept for the monster (affectionately known simply as “Clover” in-house) is simple, says Abrams. “He’s a baby. He’s brand-new. He’s confused, disoriented and irritable. And he’s been down there in the water for thousands and thousands of years.”

And where is he from? “We don’t say – deliberately,” notes Goddard. “Our movie doesn’t have the scientist in the white lab coat who shows up and explains things like that. We don’t have that scene.”

Not only is the creature disoriented – he’s downright angry. “There are a bunch of smaller things – humans – that are annoying him and shooting at him like a swarm of bees,” observes Reeves. “None of these things are going to kill the monster, but they hurt it and it doesn’t understand. It’s this new environment that it finds frightening.”

About those human-size “parasites” that attack people on the streets:

“They’re these horrifying, dog-sized creatures that just scatter around the city and add to the nightmare of the evening,” Abrams says.

“The parasites have a voracious, rabid, bounding nature, but they also have a crab-like crawl,” Reeves explains. “They have the viciousness of a dog, but with the ability to climb walls and stick to things.”

In addition, the parasites also move more rapidly than their giant host counterpart. “Tippett Studio has a lot of expertise with these kinds of fast-moving creatures that can destroy people and rip them to shreds, which is always a lot of fun to work on,” says Leven. “They’re like little whirling dervishes that just destroy anything in their path. They’re totally deadly.”

Read the rest of it over at SlashFilm.