Nightmare Fuel / Cloverfield

WARNING: Spoilers are unmarked.

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Face to face, with nowhere left to run.

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• The entire scenario. This is a kaiju attack not from the usual view from afar, but strictly from the view of the poor civilians on the ground, trying desperately to survive crumbling buildings, collapsing bridges and, oh yeah, the giant man-eating monster that keeps popping up where they least expect it.
• The giant tick-things appearing to grin, with eyes glowing in the dark. And the octane rating only goes up once they bite you.
• Much like how the original Godzilla was a metaphor for the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there's a good amount of terrifying 9/11 imagery here.
• The fact the movie leads with a title card reading "...retrieved from the area formerly known as Central Park." One shudders to think how the tape ends.
• They're not revealed in the film itself, but see those tube-like things dangling from Clover's belly? According to behind-the-scenes material, those are essentially elongated mouths with teeth-like fingers that lead into Clover's stomach. Anyone unfortunate to be running underneath them are sucked up and eaten alive. Imagine running for your life, only be sucked up by those things. Or even worse, imagine running with your family or friends, only to watch them get sucked up.
• Marlena's fate. While the main characters are walking through a Sinister Subway tunnel (a scene which is pretty creepy in its own right), Marlena gets bitten by one of the parasites that fall off of Clover. A few minutes later, when they end up at a first aid center set up by the military, her eyes start bleeding uncontrollably. Everyone starts freaking out, the staff drag her behind a curtain, and we see a huge splatter of blood against it. We explicitly see her body rapidly bloat up like a balloon and explode. The sound is understated, and possibly more nauseating for it, like a wet burp.
  Marlena: Hud? I don't feel so good.
  • Doesn't help that a Freeze-Frame Bonus reveals part of her ribcage after the flesh and organs erupt.
  • If you listen carefully, you hear Marlena scream, then her screams turn into a strangled gurgling as she bloats. She felt the whole thing.
  • When they were entering the first aid center, some nurses pass through with another "bite victim" with their ribcage just gone, so as a little Foreshadowing.
• The fate of the crew of the M109-howitzer that Clover crushes in full view of the camera. One of the guys almost makes it out and manages to scream before he is squashed.
• The Hammerdown Protocol itself:
  "...which means they're going to let this whole area go..."
  "You mean Midtown?"
  "No, I mean Manhattan."
  • Just consider how bad things have to be for the government to even be willing to flatten all of Manhattan. The entire situation can be summed up by one line of dialogue from the soldier that rescues Rob and his friends after they ask him what Clover is.
    Soldier: If they know, they ain't telling me. But whatever it is, it's winning.
• The scene where Hud comes face-to-face with Clover. We don't even get a cheap Jump Scare; Hud turns around and the monster is just there. It doesn't roar or take any sort of predatory stance, just stares into the camera, takes a sniff, then... CHOMP.
• Clover itself is scary, but the scariest part of it all? It's a baby.
  • Babies spook easily. And when Clover gets skittish, buildings crumble. There's also the fact that babies have enormous appetites, and in between spooking and running away, Clover has to stop and feed. And it's surrounded by tasty little treats: us.
  • Clover's roars are the stuff of nightmares, but special mention goes to where the Hammerdown Protocol rains down on him off-screen. We only have to think about the type of pain he's going through to cause him to unleash a never-ending scream of agony.
• Imagine being in Beth's position. You're stuck in your apartment, alone and injured. Your building has been damaged and is left leaning against the next one. You hear explosions and screams outside, but have no way of trying to find out what the hell is going on. And when your friends finally get to you, you learn that a fucking kaiju is rampaging through the city. And you see it coming close to your building as you and your friends try to escape in time. Oh, and you have only a limited amount of time before the military bombs the city in a desperate bid to kill the monster. That is quite a harrowing situation to be in.
• As Rob, Hud, and Beth are being evacuated, they watch as Clover is hit with missiles by the military and seemingly goes down. Hud cheers, clearly thinking it's over...then a roaring Clover jumps out of the smoke at the helicopter! Possibly the Jump Scare to end all Jump Scares.
• One last scare the film gives us is at the end when it shows an old video of Rob and Beth having fun on a ferris wheel. It's very subtle and easy to miss, but if you look closely at the ocean behind them in the shot, you'll see something falling into it.
  • Fifteen years later, the director confirmed that Rob had indeed unwittingly recorded the monster falling to Earth.
• Listen closely as the credits end and you can hear Rob's voice weakly calling for help, raising all sorts of Fridge Horror regarding his fate on its own. However, listening to that voice clip reversed elevates the horror to a whole new level...
  It's still alive...

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