10 Cloverfield Lane is a movie that had an unusual marketing campaign similar to its 2008 predecessor Cloverfield, a found footage monster movie. Its trailer came out of nowhere just months before the actual movie. It had deep fake viral marketing websites that sucked people into following breadcrumbs right into producer JJ Abrams mystery box. I wish more movies did this instead of releasing a billion trailers that give away the whole plot before you even see the movie. 10 Cloverfield Lane breaks all those rules leaving the audience with mostly zero expectations other than they should expect a haunting thriller…expectations it exceeds.
10 Cloverfield Lane is directed by first time feature film director Dan Trachtenberg and produced by JJ Abrams. It stars, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, and John Gallagher Jr. The story and premise is rather simple. The story follows Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character, Michelle as she is driving through some back country road in the middle of the night. She crashes and awakens cuffed to a bed in an underground bunker. This underground bunker is Howard’s bunker, played by John Goodman. Howard is a crazy-eyed, doomsday prepping, conspiracy theorist who believes he’s saved Michelle’s life because there was a massive attack above that plagued earth with radiation. Michelle of course thinks he is nuts and that she has been kidnapped along with Emmet who’s played by John Gallagher Jr.. Most of the movie takes place in this bunker.
Tensions flair. Michelle tries to break free and discover the truth with Emmet. At the same time Howard tries to convince and warn them that he is NOT nuts but there was in fact a catastrophic event. There are many twists. Just when you think Michelle is being kidnapped and Howard is just nuts. You are given breadcrumbs to think he’s not. You go back in forth with Michelle’s character and you can really feel her psychological struggle within this bunker. She’s a character we can follow and root for. They don’t play on sex appeal but play on her smarts and courage of a woman to solve this mystery.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead did a fantastic job at making the audience feel her pain as each situation she gets into gets worse and worse, yet she manages to overcome and cleverly MacGyver her way out of it. That leads us to Howard played by John Goodman. I was blown away by his haunting performance to the point I forgot it was John Goodman. I was creeped out, haunted, hated, and felt somewhat sorry for the guy at one point. The tension he plays between a doomsday prepper that saved these two people and a borderline psycho is great. It adds to the mystery and thrill of not knowing the truth. A truth that Michelle finally discovers in a heart pounding finale. I won’t discuss too much detail on that because some mysteries must remain in the box for the audience to see for themselves. But it was well done and to see Michelle’s character arc come full circle from someone who ran away from their problems to the woman who runs headlong into the situation to solve it. She discovers herself in the bunker and comes out a better person.
As for the directing, Dan Trachtenberg did a phenomenal job for his first full length feature film. They way it was filmed and paced makes you feel claustrophobic in a good way that made you feel like you were in there with the main character. Since the whole movie pretty much takes place in a bunker it would be easy to screw it up and not bring anything fresh or tension filled with each scene being in the same location but he masters this to the point that there is something always going on that pushes the story forward in a fresh way. Each scene makes the situation worse for the main character, gives the character a little more information, then gives us even more questions. I give the director props. This is a nice first movie to have under his belt and I look forward to seeing his future films. Not only was this movie wonderfully directed and shot but the music was great. It was often silent with some build up for suspense leading into a fully bombastic classic monster movie style score.
Overall I was thoroughly pleased with this movie. I went in knowing next to nothing other than I saw the first Cloverfield movie. Even that isn’t necessarily something you have to see before going into this movie, which may be disappointing for some that there is very little connections between the two movies. Perhaps we have seen everything in the mystery box just yet. It’s hard to classify this movie. It’s not a horror movie but it has some horror elements. It’s a deep psychological thriller oozing with mystery and suspense. It’s a mixed bag of the first Cloverfield, Aliens, and War of the World’s. Yet it all takes place in a bunker, not showing you what is above right off the bat. That is the mystery that keeps you guessing. It doesn’t show or explain everything to you…Just enough…to keep you speculating….guessing…and anticipating what the next Cloverfield movie will be about.
5/5 Stars