Lizzy Caplan

Cloverfield

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Before watching the movie:

Cloverfield. Bad Robot 2008.

This movie had so much hype when it came out that I couldn’t avoid learning that this is a story in found footage about a Kaiju style attack on New York from the perspective of the running screaming little people on the ground who know almost nothing. I know it was so popular that a franchise was quickly spun up, which had varying success in recapturing the response.

It just never appealed to me before as a monster movie, but the cultural impact of at least the marketing around this movie is undeniable. I think this was among the first times a mainstream media release used an Alternate Reality Game to build buzz, and it definitely caught attention. I think some people were let down by the high expectations from the hype train, so that was more reason for me not to bother at the time.

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Mean Girls

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Mean Girls. Paramount Pictures 2004.
Mean Girls. Paramount Pictures 2004.

Before watching the movie:

I’m fairly certain there were girls’ clique stories before Mean Girls, and of course many more after and because of it. So my impression is that this is extremely generic. But that’s probably unfair. Especially because of the influence this has had on the ten years since. And there’s always room for the writing to rise above a generic story type. I know there are a handful of lines that have become memetic.

This is also likely the most in-depth look at the girls’ clique trope. I seem to recall an idea that this is nearly anthropological in its study of catty high school girls, but that may be an argument beyond the depth of this blog.

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