As George Lucas sadly discovered several years ago, you can’t deliberately create a cult film.

Sure, J.J. Abrams and director Matt Reeves are doing their best to make Cloverfield (which opens Jan. 18) the cult science fiction hit of ’08, but there is an increasing feeling of desperation about the project as it nears release.

First, Abrams has said he wanted the film to present a monster that will be as loved by Americans as Godzilla is loved by the Japanese (memo to J.J. — we already have one — he’s called “King Kong”), then the production company refuses to show any pictures of the monster, which is never a good sign. Add to that a movie trailer that looks like it was shot with a hand-held video camera (Godzilla meets the Blair Witch Project?) and it really looks like a movie that’s straining far too hard to be hip.

Fortunately, there are several other contenders for THE science fiction cult film of 2008. Here is a brief look at some of them.

(scheduled for release Feb. 22)

Synopsis: In the city of Terminus on New Year’s Eve, all communication is seized by a mysterious signal that enhances the desires, fears, and anxieties of everyone that receives the transmission. As the signal provokes insanity and murderous impulses, a man tries to save the woman he loves from her crazed husband, but as he journeys across the city to help her he has to decide which people have been changed by the signal and who he can trust to help — or at least not murder — him.

Cult Sci-Fi Flourish: The movie unfolds in three separate segments by three separate directors — David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry. However, the screenplay was also written by the trio to try and make the different elements of the story blend together well. The first 30 minutes sees the world dissolve into madness and we meet a woman trapped in a loveless marriage. Her husband and his friends are trying to fix the TV as the signal begins and her husband kills a friend and people begin running amok in the streets. In the second segment, the movie becomes a dark comedy (think Shaun Of The Dead) with a couple planning on guests to arrive for a New Year’s Eve party and the crazed husband searching for his wife. The final segment involves the wife and the man who loves her meeting to try to escape the city and find some place in the world that might still be sane.

Preliminary Opinion: How can you NOT love a movie with the tagline Do You Have The Crazy?

(Scheduled for release Aug. 29)

Synopsis: In the not-too-distant future, society has crumbled into warring factions, para-military groups, and cults. In a world choking with poverty and death, Vin Diesel stars is a mercenary hired to bring a young woman (Melanie Thierry) and a nun (Michelle Yeoh) from Russia to China. Diesel has to get the girl and the nun through military-controlled zones, and fight gang wars and religious fanatics to ensure the safety of the women.

Cult Sci-Fi Flourish: The girl is carrying a virus that allows people to create expanded consciousness and change their own DNA. Various fanatics and psychos want to capture the girl, including a band of fanatics who want to use her virus to create a new messiah. The film is based on a novel by Maurice G. Dantec and has been described as a heady mix of punk rock, Philip K. Dick, and Fredrich Nietzche. It is directed by Matthieu Kassovitz who gave us the film Gothika.

Preliminary Opinion: I’d watch anything with Michelle Yeoh but there are a several of problems with this movie. One big drawback is that its release date was moved from Feb. 29 to Aug. 29, amid rumors of location filming problems and budget crisis. It’s also rumored that the U.S. version will be 30 minutes shorter than the European release and key scenes needed for continuity were cut — in other words, it might not make much sense. Also, the words “by the director of Gothika” are pretty scary.

(release date not set, but it is scheduled to be released this year)

Synopsis: In Meanwhile City, a metropolis in a parallel universe, a masked vigilante cop called Jonathan Preest (played by Ryan Phillipe) kidnaps people from cults and works to undermine the government — a theocracy run by a religious group called “The Ministry.” Preest, it seems, is the only atheist in a world of religious zealots. Somehow, all this spills over into the contemporary London in OUR universe. The movie also features Eva Green as a suicidal art student (are there any other kind?); Sam Riley as Milo, a guy looking for the purity of lost love in a world corrupted by religion; and Bernard Hill as a Church Warden arriving in London to find his missing son.

Cult Sci-Fi Flourish: Some of the religious cults in Meanwhile City include (according to director Gerald McMorrow) “The Seventh Day Manicurists” and a washing machine religion whose doctrines and beliefs come from a washing machine instruction manual. Like, The Signal, this movie also has inter-connected storylines — three in London and one in Meanwhile City.

Preliminary Opinion: The movie tagline Reality Hasn’t A Prayer; the masked hero trying to bring down a ruthless government; and a society full of damaged people makes me think of V For Vendetta.