Cloverfield: The Abridged Script
By: Rod Hilton on Jul 14th, 2008 | Movie Rating: 
Worst amateur porn ever.
GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT #SUK-87127-785
SCRIPT FRAGMENTS RETRIEVED FROM COCKTAIL NAPKINS AT SITE “US-447″
AREA FORMERLY KNOWN AS “4PLAY GENTLEMEN’S CLUB”
FADE IN:
INT. APARTMENT - NEW YORK
A group of WEALTHY DOUCHEBAGS gather for a party while listening to SHITTY MUSIC. MIKE VOGEL approaches T.J. MILLER.
MIKE VOGEL
Hey, I need you to take this video camera and film everyone here and anything else that happens tonight.
T.J. MILLER
Because you need me to record goodbye messages for our friend, Michael Stahl-David?
MIKE VOGEL
No, because it will be used as an obnoxious gimmick that will distract everyone from realizing our movie has no plot whatsoever.
T.J. takes the camera and films the exact people who will wind up in a group later on, conveniently. MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID enters.
DOUCHEBAGS
SURPRISE! Congratulations on getting into a real movie despite having a frat boy beard!
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
Holy shit, my apartment is full of extremely low-paid film extras.
T.J. MILLER (O.C.)
Hey! Say something sarcastic into the camera so that everyone in the audience knows how totally like them you are.
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
Is that my extremely high definition camcorder? Dammit, I had a tape in there of me and Odette Yustman on an awkward next-day date after a one-night-stand.
T.J. MILLER (O.C.)
Don’t worry, dude. Whenever I turn the camera off I make sure to fast-forward for a second just to keep snippets of your date interspersed. Check it out.
FLASH CUT TO:
EXT. CONEY ISLAND - NEW YORK
MICHAEL and ODETTE YUSTMAN desperately reach for topics of conversation while avoiding EYE CONTACT.
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
So how are you enjoying Coney Island so far?
ODETTE YUSTMAN
It’s great! I’m having such a good time! It would be a real shame if our city were to be attacked by a gigantic monster!
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
I know right! How totally tragic that would be, for reals!
FLASH CUT TO:
INT. APARTMENT
T.J. MILLER (O.C.)
See? No problem.
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
That reminds me, I need to go talk to Odette. I haven’t spoken to her since we had sex.
T.J. MILLER (O.S.)
What is this shit, Laguna Beach?
MICHAEL fights with ODETTE YUSTMAN in order to create DRAMATIC TENSION.
Suddenly, there is a LARGE EXPLOSION outside. Everyone runs out to see what it is, and the HEAD FROM A STATUE OF LIBERTY ABOUT 3 TIMES LARGER THAN THE ACTUAL STATUE OF LIBERTY rolls down the street.
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
Holy shit. We should take shelter underground somewhere!
MIKE VOGEL
No, that would make too much sense. We should wander the streets!
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
You’re right! Let’s take the bridge, the most vulnerable possible place we could go!
MIKE VOGEL
And we should make sure to take the bridge closest to the deadly explosions!
MICHAEL, MIKE, MIKE’s fiancee JESSICA LUCAS, and completely random cast member LIZZY CAPLAN all cross the BROOKLYN BRIDGE. Suddenly, MICHAEL gets a phone call from ODETTE YUSTMAN.
ODETTE YUSTMAN
(on phone)
Michael! I’m trapped in my apartment and for some reason decided not to call 9-1-1, my family, people in my building, or even the guy I brought to your party!
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
Shit! I must heroically go rescue Odette!
T.J. MILLER (O.C.)
And I must document it, rather than, say, get the fuck out of here.
JESSICA LUCAS
And Lizzy and I will go too, since we have speaking parts in this movie.
Just after MICHAEL decides to turn back, the BRIDGE collapses and MIKE VOGEL DIES.
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
No! My brother!
(pause)
Alright, shall we keep going?
JESSICA LUCAS
I see no reason for the tragic loss of my fiancee to convince me not to be part of your idiotic suicide mission to rescue some random girl that let you fuck her, almost certainly out of pity.
A MONSTER attacks some buildings, and the EMPIRE STATE BUILDING collapses in on itself, releasing a huge plume of smoke that funnels down the street towards the camera.
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
Oh my God, this is just like 9/11! So much so that the allusion is excessive and in extremely poor taste!
RANDOM JACKASS
Cloverfield was an inside job! Wake up sheeple!
MICHAEL, JESSICA, LIZZY, and T.J. go underground and walk the subway tracks. While walking, they are attacked by LITTLE CRITTERS THAT SOUND LIKE DONALD DUCK WHEN HE GETS PISSED OFF.
LIZZY CAPLAN
Holy shit, zerglings!
T.J. MILLER (O.C.)
I’ll heroically help you fight them off while unheroically refusing to free up a second arm by letting go of the fucking camera!
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
Now the critters are attacking you! You’re actually trying to fight them off while holding the camera! What in the shitting fuck is wrong with you?
T.J. MILLER (O.C.)
(kicking ineffectively)
This is important! I have to document everything! If I upload this to Break.com, I might get four-hundred bucks!
JESSICA LUCAS
If the excuse for this movie’s shaky premise is going to be that you feel a duty to document what’s happening, why won’t you hold the camera steady on the monster for more than half a second?
T.J. MILLER (O.C.)
I’ve seen the thing. It looks like an even more poorly rendered version of that green crab thing Obi-Wan fights in Attack of the Clones. Trust me, it’s better to keep the camera off it.
They escape the CRITTERS but then LIZZY’s head EXPLODES.
JESSICA LUCAS
Oh my god! The critter bite caused her head to explode?!
T.J. MILLER (O.C.)
Nah, she just watched part of this movie and got so nauseous that she literally puked her head off.
They make their way to ODETTE’S APARTMENT and find her on the ground with a STEEL ROD poking through her abdomen. They pull it out and, within moments, ODETTE is able to walk and run normally.
ODETTE YUSTMAN
Thanks for rescuing me, Michael! I feel no guilt whatsoever over the fact that your brother and a friend died going along with you.
They all pile into a HELICOPTER, which CRASHES. Nearly EVERYONE survives somehow. Shortly afterwards, everyone DIES ANYWAY.
FLASH CUT TO:
EXT. CONEY ISLAND
MICHAEL and ODETTE continue their cheapass date.
MICHAEL STAHL-DAVID
The battery is about to die, do you have anything else you want to say?
ODETTE YUSTMAN
Yeah. How the fuck did you manage to fill 90 minutes of tape at Coney Island?
END
Excellent review, I had been waiting for this one for a while. You hit on pretty much everything I hated about the movie aside from a few major issues I had.
Although of a few of these can be written off as “Hollywood-isms” that doesn’t make them any less pants-on-head retarded. For instance: can someone please tell me how the monster is somehow immune to THE LAWS OF PHYSICS? Here we have a giant organic monster getting shot with 5.56mm rounds from the Marines’ rifles, 120mm shells from tanks, and 155mm artillery rounds from the Paladin vehicle…and that’s just the stuff he was getting hit with from the GROUND. That doesn’t count the stuff the bombers and planes were dropping. Mark 82s from the bombers, Maverick missiles from the jet planes…I mean come on! That shit is designed to take out tanks…bunker busters that pierce through MOUNTAINS to hit the bases beneath it and this monster just gets right back up after being pelted with this stuff for roughly 5 HOURS STRAIGHT since the military arrived.
My other major complaint was one that I had known was going to be there from the moment I heard this was from J.J Abrams because this is exactly what he does: A complete and total lack of any explanation or reasoning behind any of the events or origins whatsoever. Where’d the monster come from? Why is he there? Why is he invincible? Why do people explode? Storytelling 101…seriously.
I didn’t like the movie at all. >:(
July 15th, 2008 at 9:01 pmI think I would have liked if if I could have kept my eyes on the screen for longer stretches than five minutes without risking puking on the guy in front of me. Shaky-cam is bad enough in small doses but a whole fucking movie is ridiculous. I don’t know if they redefined the giant monster movie or not but I do know that this “Primary Source Film” gimmick needs to die. And it wasn’t even realistic to what a home made film looks like. You know what happen when you point a camera at a tv? It’s not crystal clear pictures of the news coverage.
And no, I didn’t see Blair Witch in theaters, I was like twelve when that came out and my parents were all “No way.”
July 15th, 2008 at 9:39 pm“My other major complaint was one that I had known was going to be there from the moment I heard this was from J.J Abrams because this is exactly what he does: A complete and total lack of any explanation or reasoning behind any of the events or origins whatsoever. Where’d the monster come from? Why is he there? Why is he invincible? Why do people explode? Storytelling 101…seriously.”
The monster came from the ocean. JJ has been quoted saying this. I know, it’s not in the movie, but that’s where. If you followed the viral ad campaign (tagruato, tidowave, jaimeandteddy, etc.) this became apparent, as well. And about the ad campaign: it was actually really good. I couldn’t believe it. My only gripe was that it didn’t tie-in with the movie more.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:04 pm“You’re actually trying to fight them off while holding the camera! What in the shitting fuck is wrong with you?”
I assumed the camera had a strap around it, and the cameraguy had his hand in the strap,and taking it off would mean stopping during the attack. It’s the only way half the movie makes sense, really.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:07 pmI think the reason I was so drawn in by this movie, even on a repeat viewing, was that the early ad campaign was so effectively creepy and full of mystery. It’s fun to look for clues in anything and everything to try to piece together what’s really going on.
But in the end, this movie was never about where the monster came from or how it was defeated by some “heroes”; it’s about how a bunch of random, ordinary people dealt with a city-crushing movie monster attack. It’s a story that follows the doomed civilians for a change. (Although that’s been done in some space-alien invasion movies lately too.)
July 15th, 2008 at 11:38 pm“You’re actually trying to fight them off while holding the camera! What in the shitting fuck is wrong with you?”
Beats watching a movie thats nothng more than 90 minutes of out of focus ground shots.
WAY to many of Rods “jokes” now are just nit picking at stuff that has to happen to make a movie watchable.
What happened to the talent?
July 16th, 2008 at 12:36 am“just nit picking at stuff that has to happen to make a movie watchable”.
Or… justified mockery of the ludicrous extremes a film has to go to to sustain it’s stupidly drawn-out premise?
July 16th, 2008 at 2:52 am“Or… justified mockery of the ludicrous extremes a film has to go to to sustain it’s stupidly drawn-out premise?”
Or the fact certain people can’t get off their high horse and accept this is nothing but an Westernized version of Godzilla which didn’t have a Prince of Arabia-type premise either. Get over yourself. Cloverfield was a monster movie which Rod clearly pointed out but you failing to grasp.
July 16th, 2008 at 4:19 amdid not like this movie, shaky cam needs to go away forever
great script though!
July 16th, 2008 at 8:31 amQuoting Jesse: “If you followed the viral ad campaign (tagruato, tidowave, jaimeandteddy, etc.) this became apparent, as well. And about the ad campaign: it was actually really good. I couldn’t believe it. My only gripe was that it didn’t tie-in with the movie more.”
That’s the thing though, *HOW* many movie goers follow viral marketing campaigns? As you said it wasn’t in the movie, and I have friends who were all way into this movie before it came out who told me this info. However that doesn’t make it *right*. If you’re telling a story through film, then that means that the entirety of your story should be understood in the 2-3 hours you’re there in the movie theatre. Not something like this, as a made-up example:
Me: “I guess the movie was ok, but where did that other character come from in the last ten minutes of the movie. he was never in there!”
Friend: “Oh, you didn’t know? That was the character that the director talked about on an Entertainment Tonight interview. He had a whole backstory that you can read that really explains a lot if you collected enough points from Pepsi bottle caps and redeemed them on the official websites and know the codes that appear in the viral Youtube video series.”
See what happened there? Fail, that’s what happened. That’s like the stupid radio sound clip at the end of the movie that is just gibberish. Except it’s not Gibberish if you
1) Somehow rip the sound file from the movie.
2) have access to a sound mixing software or program
3) mix and manipulate the sound file until you can decode the message.
That. Is. Bullshit.
I don’t go to movies to play detective games, I go to movies to be told a story. And if a director or writer can’t convey the entirety of his story in that 2-3 hour timespan, then he failed.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:30 pm