10 Cloverfield Lane

In 2008, J.J. Abrams rocked the world with Cloverfield, a found footage movie about a gigantic monster (of Godzilla levels) rampaging through New York City. People were amazed by the brave style of the film, looking as if it was shot from a handheld camcorder by the only survivors of the whole thing. It was a huge success and people wanted more. Finally, this year, we got more. Or did we?

10 Cloverfield Lane is a very, very strange movie. While it shares one word with the title of its successor, the movie is honestly completely different, only being a, "blood relative," as Abrams calls it. In fact there's only a few resemblances between the two on the surface, and honestly, I feel slightly disappointed. This movie has been regarded as a, "new frontier for cinema," and I can see what they're coming from, but otherwise, I feel kinda...cheated?

First, let me give some context. Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is escaping from an abusive relationship when she has an accident on a rural road in Louisiana. She wakes up inside a bunker, where she meets her host, Howard (John Goodman), and Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr). She's told that, "an attack," has taken place upon the United States, and that Howard brought her here to save her from the fallout. However, as Michelle and Emmett start to uncover more and more about Howard's past, they start to question the reality of whether or not something is really going on. Also, there are aliens, but just in the last ten minutes of the film.

Foremost, I want to applaud the people at Bad Robot for assembling the film the way they did. Everything from the direction, to the score, to the casting is perfect for the film (especially John Goodman, I can't get enough of that man in anything he's ever in). The movie is honest to god a quite beautiful film, with great use of establishing shots and a fantastic attention to detail in the action scenes and suspenseful scenes. If it were all down to that aspect alone, I'd give this movie a 5 off the get go.

However, I have to explain my negative feelings for this film. Take out the name Cloverfield from it, and replace it with something else. Maybe, "Kingsman," or something. Take out the name Cloverfield, and this movie would work by itself. With the name Cloverfield, I was expecting a lot more that had to do with the 2008 original than just ten minutes of Winstead fighting an alien mothership. Maybe I'm being unfair here, because I guess it can be argued that no monsters were actually shown in the trailer, and I got what was advertised, but I still feel very, very disappointed. That's my one honest problem with this film. It doesn't really have anything to do with what it really came from.

BUT, I am leaving this review open for later interpretation. I've heard a possibility that Bad Robot will take this film and link it to the first in a future Cloverfield franchise installment. If that's the case, then I will come back to this, but as of right now, I'm slightly off-put. It's a great and suspenseful horror-thriller, but it was not what I expected from the title. With that said, I admire the way that it was manufactured, so I'm going to stamp a 3 out of 5 on it for right now. Who knows, maybe I'll come to love this film after a re-watch? Until then, no one knows...I just hope something gets fixed here.