If 10 Cloverfield Lane is still playing in your neighborhood, stop reading and go see it NOW! I don’t care if you didn’t see Cloverfield. I don’t care if you saw Cloverfield, and you didn’t like it. SEE IT!
10 Cloverfield Lane works either as a standalone movie or a sidequel to Cloverfield. For those of you unfamiliar with Cloverfield, it was a found footage movie about a monster terrorizing NYC. A group of young people try to rescue a friend. I enjoyed it, but one friend was concerned about sitting in a dark theater forced to watch shaky camera footage for 1 hour and 43 minutes. 10 Cloverfield Lane is not a found footage movie so any concern is unwarranted.
10 Cloverfield Lane is about a woman who suddenly awakens after a car accident to find herself in an underground bunker with John Goodman. Can he be trusted or should she risk going outside? That question may sound like a no brainer in a world where women locked up in men’s homes is unfortunately a thing with or without an alleged alien/monster apocalypse, but 10 Cloverfield Lane makes it very difficult for the viewer to answer that question thanks to excellent writing, acting and a judicious use of special effects.
I’ve seen plenty of movies about strangers confined to a limited space for questionable reasons. Most of those movies range from dreadful (The Divide, Aftermath) to uneven (Condemned) to solid for their genre (Rec and Mulberry Street). 10 Cloverfield Lane is a phenomenal movie-not for a psychological thriller, not for a sci fi movie, but a phenomenal movie regardless of genre. It also doesn’t hurt that 10 Cloverfield Lane taps into the doomsday prepper in all of us.
10 Cloverfield Lane creates a few solid characters that feel like real people whom you empathize with. John Goodman deserves a lot of credit for a lifetime of amazing performances. In 10 Cloverfield Lane, Goodman expertly walks a tightrope by being simultaneously so likable and creepy that he makes you doubt your instincts. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot by discussing the other characters, but
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is Mary Elizabeth Winstead the next Jaimie Lee Curtis or Sigourney Weaver? Why did Michelle leave her fiancee? When she finally escapes the bunker, it is as if she just graduated from college and got thrown into the Masters program with no time to celebrate. I need a sequel! I loved 10 Cloverfield Lane. Go get your chick kicking butt vitamins!