10 Cloverfield Lane: 8 Reasons The Marketing Was Genius

J.J. Abrams' ultimate mystery box.

Marketing execs spend millions of dollars and incalculable man hours trying to make a movie a big hit. How do you appeal to all four quadrants? How much should you reveal in a trailer? How do you combat a negative critical reaction in the aggregate age? Get the focus groups prepped! What a waste of time - turns out all you need to do is slap the name of a street near the Bad Robot offices in the title and you're dandy. 10 Cloverfield Lane is great, a character-driven hostage thriller that expertly plays with tension levels and audience allegiance over its runtime. However, by all objective accounts it isn't anything special. We get small budget, tight locationed thrillers starring named actors released all the time, some of them pretty good. This one is definitely in the top percentile, but what makes it such a stand-out? It's all in the marketing - 10 Cloverfield Lane comes from Bad Robot, J.J. Abrams' production company, and the Trek-Wars maestro's grubby mitts are all over the campaign, from its obscene levels of secrecy to that connection-teasing title. And, quite frankly, it's genius; as good as the movie is, its marketing is nothing short of masterful. Let's take a look at what makes it so awesome. Note: Minimal spoilers, although as we're looking at the marketing in contrast to how it influences the finished product, there a certain things that could be read as alluding to things you may feel are spoilers if you haven't seen the film. Clear? Good.
Contributor
Contributor

Film Editor (2014-2016). Loves The Usual Suspects. Hates Transformers 2. Everything else lies somewhere in the middle. Once met the Chuckle Brothers.