What are we to make of this film, Cloverfield, which opens January 18, 2008? What is the monster? Is it the monster of the id or a cryptid? Is this MySpace horror or YouTube cryptofiction run amok? Certainly people have had fun for a few months trying to figure it out (see sample video solutions below).

What is this movie really all about? A cellphone camera version of “Blair Witch Horror” meets “Godzilla,” with a bit of “Planet of the Apes” thrown in, regarding the Statue of Liberty. And how about, jeez, those trailers? Some people love them, some people don’t.

You may have missed the earliest trailers, but the first one I saw was overusing the name of the main character, “Robert Hawkins.” But soon, there was a big problem with that.

As it turns out, the same week the trailers began screening at theaters was the same week that a real Robert Hawkins was in the news. Robert Hawkins is the name of the 19-year-old shooter who killed 8, then himself, at the mall in Omaha, on December 5, 2007. Ooops. (And some people think I make this “name game” stuff up.)

I’ve seen the Cloverfield trailers since then, and the “Robert Hawkins” references have been dropped. Sure “Rob” is still in ‘em, but no more “Robert Hawkins.” I wonder if they changed the name of the character in their post-production edits too?

What kind of monster is on your cellphone?