J.J. Abrams “Cloverfield” project seems to have dropped off everyone’s radar for a while. I didn’t see anyone do a big story about another picture popping up at 1-18-08.com or any new discoveries miraculously unveiled in a couple weeks. Frankly, I’ve been okay with that. There’s a part of me that really hopes Bad Robot pulls the wool over the respective online community and forces us all to go into the movie in the dark.

Not everyone is like me, however. Some people want to know everything they can about “Cloverfield” and we’re happy to oblige. So here’s the latest scuttlebutt, brought to the next by Dread Central, who claims to have a scoop on details about the monster in Abrams’ monster movie. Now, prepare yourself. It’s not Godzilla or Voltron or Cthulu like anyone has suggested until now. Specifically what it is isn’t disclosed, but apparently it isn’t alone.

Because the movie is a low budget endeavor, the cost of a giant beast destroying New York City is likely to be out of the film’s budget. But a few shots of a huge monster destroying the city could then lead to the movie’s characters running for their lives, and being chased by smaller monsters. That’s what Dread Central’s scooper, aptly named Mr. Slusho, claims is the case. Smaller “raptor-like” monsters will chase the main characters as they attempt to survive the Monsterous, Furious, Colossus (pick your slogan) attack that is unleashed upon the city.

Hmmm, I could deal with small monsters being a part of the attack, but “raptor-like”? Isn’t that kind of what Roland Emmerich did with his Godzilla? Which then leads to the question – did that not work because it was stupid, or did it not work because people were expecting a Godzilla flick? Do we want another The Lost World sequence made into an entire movie?

If we’re looking at smaller monsters, perhaps Abrams isn’t shrouding his production to create mystery as much as to keep expectations low. In that case, is the low profile that’s creating higher interest a bad thing?