JJ Abrams' secret deepens...

Regular readers will know that we just can’t stay away from a nice piece of viral web work – even if it is just marketing for a movie like Batman sequel The Dark Knight.

And JJ Abrams – the man who created Alias and Lost, as well as directing M:I:III, is no stranger to puzzles and confounding expectations. So we’re not exactly surprised that two new websites are seemingly linked to his big secret project, the monster movie codenamed Cloverfield.

Click on to this website here , and you’re confronted with a series of ever more complex puzzles, which, when unlocked, slowly start spoon feeding you information in the form of crackly videos related to the prophecies of one Ethan Haas. But then, there are always two sides to a story, and this countering blog here tries to debunk what you’re hearing.

Finally, the film’s trailer ran before Transformers this week, and while several bootleg versions appeared on the magical Internets (before being yanked under orders from Paramount), it did reveal the film’s release date in the US (1-18-08) and in the last few days, a website with the same numeral has been bought.

What we know for sure is it’s set in New York at a bloke’s leaving party. Shot almost entirely on digital camcorders, it details a terrible event that occurs, with the Statue Of Liberty coming off particularly badly (big French stone lady go boom) while our “heroes” scream and cry. Wouldn’t you. And we’ve reported previously that while Abrams is producing, the man behind the camera is Matt Reeves, a long time associate, while the script’s penned by Buffy, Alias and Lost writer Drew Goddard.

We promised we’d keep you up to date, and we will…