10 Cloverfield Lane: A Complete Guide To The Viral Marketing

Cloverfield ARG Recap

Before diving into the viral marketing for 10 Cloverfield Lane, first let's turn the clock back eight years (wow, it's been that long) to the original Cloverfield, which boasted one of the greatest ARGs of all time. Here, in the most conceise manner possible, is a summary of how all that went down, some of which has proven important to the grounding of the "sequel": The first step of the campaign was 1-18-08.com (the original movie's release date), which featured several photographs showing the characters from the movie and, as we got closer to release, more overt links to the ARG. The back of these photos had several written clues, some of which proved essential in finding what followed. Based off a drinks cup in the teaser, fans found Slusho, a Japanese soft drink with a secret ingredient found on the ocean floor. Its slogan was "You can't drink just six", and its popularity has led to it popping up in other projects, including Star Trek. Slusho's parent company was Tagruato, a morally-questionable oil giant who had just opened a controversial oil drilling rig, Chaui Station, not far from New York. Tagruato's subsidiary Bold Futura was involved in, among other things, space exploration, and was called in when a US Government satellite, the ChimpanzIII, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Eco-protesters T.I.D.O. Wave hacked Tagruato's website, revealing a strong opposition to the company's work. Aside from more conventional means, their attacks included a planned covert operation to investigate Chaui and what was really going on there. Jamie (who is seen passed out during the opening party scene in the film), the girlfriend of one of T.I.D.O.'s agents, Teddy Hanssen, recorded a series of video messages (found through 1-18-08.com). Across the series Jamie unknowingly becomes embroiled in the fight and we learn Teddy did indeed find something at Chaui and was captured by Tagruato. This all corroborated with messages to T.I.D.O. from an unnamed source called "The Whistleblower, who claimed there was no oil on Chaui. T.I.D.O. followed this up, only to find no station; news reports subsequently revealed the station had been destroyed days before, quite clearly by an awoken monster. In the lead up to release, Tagruato tried to play down the new reports, Jamie talked about an upcoming party, 1-18-08.com added pictures of the monster's destruction and, on release day, T.I.D.O.'s site shut down. In the build-up to the DVD release, Teddy's sister Alyse created a blog called MissingTeddyHanssen, which furthered several elements of his story, culminating in the discovery of a secure Tagruato website that revealed two images from the deep sea dive; the monster's parasites on the ocean floor and the Cloverfield monster swimming towards Chaui Station. So, in short, an oil giant accidentally woke the monster from its slumber, sending it crashing towards New York City. Now onto 10 Cloverfield Lane, which only makes things more confusing...