"10 Cloverfield Lane" Review

10 Cloverfield Lane is the sequel/spinoff/unfortunately-titled-follow-up to 2008’s Cloverfield. Both were releases with minimal marketing, revealing next to no information as to what the movie’s about. And that’s where the comparison ends.

The Cloverfield series has gone the American Horror Story route and become a sci-fi anthology. Cloverfield is a found-footage monster movie; 10 Cloverfield Lane is a boiler-room thriller. 

I rarely say this, but there’s absolutely no need to watch the original to understand the sequel. However (and I do say this often), it’s not a very good film.

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) leaves her jerk of a boyfriend in search of a new start. She’s driving on a country road at night when she’s blindsided by a truck, run off the road. She wakes up in The Blair Witch Project basement, her leg braced and chained to the wall. It’s there she meets Howard (John Goodman), a conspiracy theorist who saved her from the wreck and brought her to his underground bunker.

Howard tells Michelle there’s been an attack. Nuclear fallout has polluted the atmosphere and killed everyone – they, along with Howard’s friend Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), are the only survivors.

Goodman is great here. He's unpredictable, jumping into a fit of rage just as quickly as he flashes a warm grin. We're never certain of what's a lie or just the ramblings of a maniac. He can be a host, a patriarchal figure; at times, he hints at desire for Michelle. Howard's a character whose masculinity is always threatened, and it takes only the slightest of "disobedience" to set him off. Goodman is volatile, and his physical presence helps keep Michelle (and us) on edge; if he wants to, he can probably do some damage with ease.

Winstead plays Michelle as a quick thinker, someone who's always piecing an escape plan in the back of her head. It's fun to see her makeshift solutions come to life. I'm reminded of Saw, situations like where Michelle needs to reach her phone while chained, and only has a smattering of items to use.

Claustrophobic thrillers run the risk of turning stale. They’re restrictive in nature, limiting the amount of characters, location, and action. When a thriller stays one step ahead of its audience, turning the screw on their expectations, it builds unrest. However, 10 Cloverfield Lane is predictable. Will two characters have an awkwardly-place heart-to-heart about how they run away from their problems? Check. Will a clue fall out of the random book Michelle decides to grab from the bookcase? Absolutely. Will the ominous music force itself on every scene, even when Michelle puts on pants? It wouldn’t be a PG-13 thriller without it.

I was bored, and even when the third act rolls around, the story wraps up so quickly it feels like an afterthought. Makes sense considering Bad Robot bought the script, originally titled The Cellar and later hired Damien Chazelle (writer/director of Whiplash) to make it fit the Cloverfield universe.

The movie sequel-baits, and at the end, I feel like I've seen the pilot to a TV show. Maybe that's where Cloverfield belongs. Perhaps a Netflix deal can be reached? Or maybe I could watch The Twilight Zone instead.

Thank you all for reading. I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.