Cloverfield, the innovative monster movie directed by TV producer J. J. Abrams (Alias, Lost, Felicity), achieved the strongest January box office opening weekend in film history this past weekend.

The film grossed $40 million in U.S. ticket sales during the weekend, and added another $6 million on Monday.

Grabbing second place was another TV name. 27 Dresses, a romantic comedy starring Katharine Heigl (Gray’s Anatomy, Knocked Up), took in $22.8 million over the Friday-Sunday period and another $4.5 million on Monday.

Cloverfield grossed nearly as much as other recent big-studo monster movies such as King Kong, Jurassic Park, and the Godzilla remake, but was made on a much smaller budget, reportedly around $30 million, which is less than major studio romantic comedies cost nowadays.

The filmmakers used real ingenuity in shooting the film, making it look as if it were recorded on a camcorder. That made it both less expensive to produce but also made it more likely to look real to contemporary viewers.

The distributor contributed a smart marketing plan that left it unclear precisely what the film was about until just days before the premiere, while suggesting that it would be suspenseful, action-oriented, and human-scaled—three characteristics that seldom coincide in films today.

Set in Manhattan with skyscrapers falling and people fleeing in panic through the streets, Cloverfield clearly connects with audience members’ fears of current-day dangers, just as the Japanese monster movie Godzilla did after the atomic bomb destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Perhaps the most innovative idea behind the film was Abrams’s desire to make an old-fashioned monster movie that paradoxically made viewers feel good. Minimizing the gore quotient and introducing realistic characters whom viewers could care about were essential parts of that, the Los Angeles Times quotes the producer as saying:

"I loved monster movies when I was a kid," Abrams said recently, "and I had not seen a monster movie since then that made me feel anything, where I got that rush. I just desperately wanted to have that sensation."

The dedision to go against the current theatrical cinema trend of making everything obvious to the point of crassness clearly paid off.