I think the one question that I — and everyone else in the world — keeps asking is, how did you keep this thing secret?

Dan Trachtenberg: It’s a really easy answer: we just didn’t talk about it. That really is the truth. And for someone like me who loves movies, and loves talking about movies — here I was, making my first movie! — it was absolutely excruciating to not be able to talk about it with my friends. But at the same time, I think it’s going to be so much more rewarding for them and for everyone to see the movie and be surprised by it. And the movie is really filled with surprises. It was all carefully designed, and I’m excited that now people get to really see it as it was intended.

J.J. Abrams has said that this movie is a "blood relative" of the original Cloverfield. What does that actually mean?

"for someone like me, who loves talking about movies, it was Excruciating to keep it a secret."

Really, I think it’s taken on this meaning of being this signal to the audience that the movie is of a certain tone and certain genre, and really, that it’s a movie that is a play on genre. That first Cloverfield was a very unique take on a very familiar genre, and this movie is a different, but still unique, take on a familiar genre, and I think now the Cloverfield "thing" can really be this platform to tell really interesting and fun and original stories.

So thinking of Cloverfield almost like an umbrella brand, under which Bad Robot can reinvent certain kinds of genres?

I think so, yeah. It sort of plays on genre and things that are really scary, but still fun, and funny, and always character-oriented. And it’s in some ways part anthology, part something a little bit bigger, but only time will tell.

So much of this film seems to be about how expectations shape the way we perceive things around us — both for the characters and the audience. Michelle thinks Howard is crazy, then she finds out that things really are bad outside, and that changes everything. Then you flip things around again. With the surprise trailer and Cloverfield title, that same kind of expectation and subversion is happening with the marketing campaign, too. Was it all designed as part of a cohesive whole?

There’s been this really cool, conscious choice through all the marketing: there’s been no traditional trailer for the movie. All that we’ve been doling out are these really interesting teaser pieces. And I think not only does that preserve the surprises of the movie, but it also really celebrates anticipation, and I think it’s cool to see the marketing pieces evolve. At one point we only saw Mary see something outside that was scary, and then later we got a glimpse of what that thing might have been, and next we’re sort of hearing her describe a part of what she might be seeing outside. They’re all constantly evolving and shifting our expectations, just the way that the movie constantly shifts expectations.

The opening — a woman waking up alone in a concrete room — mirrors your short Portal: No Escape. Was that an intentional callback, and was that short part of how you got involved on this film?

They definitely saw that short, but since then I’d been developing other movies elsewhere, and been in and out of Bad Robot pitching them my own ideas, and talking about some other scripts that they had. Then when this one showed up, they thankfully thought of me for it, and I pitched them my take and they dug it. But I think that beyond the literal concept of "woman wakes up, doesn’t know who she is or how she got there" — which happens in both instances — I think there’s also this through-line in my Portal short and in this movie.

This movie is all told through [Michelle’s] POV. We never really see a scene that’s outside of her perspective, we only know what she knows, and it’s a unique experience in that the audience gets to put the pieces of the puzzle together at the same time the main character’s putting the pieces together, which really more firmly plants you in their shoes and makes the movie that much more experiential. And I think that’s a special kind of rewarding experience for an audience, one that that short showcased and one that this movie works on as well.