As for Lovecraft, you may recall a lot of speculation that the monster in this film was going to be none other than The Big C himself. Even the film’s generic title (and lack of an official title at all until around November) and mystery-shrouded marketing campaign subtly allude to this. (In Lovecraftian lore, just mentioning the creature by name is a big no-no, which is why so many alternate spellings have appeared over the years.)

It should also be noted that Cloverfield has attached the first trailer for J.J. Abrams’ next film, the upcoming Star Trek “reboot” movie, so called because it will reportedly eschew the massive cumulative backstory developed over the years and begin basically anew – a smart move considering how uninspired the last couple of series and movies have been. (Some bloggers have reported a trailer for 10,000 B.C. being shown in place of the Star Trek trailer. If that’s what you got, the Trek trailer, which is arguably even more cryptic than the ones for Cloverfield, can be seen here.

I’ve since “grown up” a bit, and have built up a nice collection of DVDs of the “Millenium Series,” a few of the Heisei Series, and of course, Shusuke Kaneko’s groundbreaking “Gamera” trilogy from the late ’90s.

So I guess my big response here is “9/11? What 9/11? Was that in Cloverfield? Where? When?”

Honestly, I never once saw it. I was far too sucked in by the fact that after watching people scurry down the streets of one Japanese city or another for more than 50 years (the original “Godzilla” was released in 1954), somebody finally wised up and said “HEY!! Wouldn’t it be great if we gave one of the evacuees a HANDICAM?”

There are little splashes of comic relief splashed throughout the movie, but they dry up @ 20 minutes from the end of the movie; it was about 10 minutes from the end when I had a brief realization, “Wow, it sure has gotten quite in here!”

I still haven’t really convinced my wife to take the plunge (shaky cameras tend to bring on the barf), but I’m sure she’ll weather the storm once it comes out on DVD.

For the rest of you, don’t wait for home theater… go see this one on the BIG SCREEN!