10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

When one observes the second part of the title, 10 Cloverfield Lane, their mind immediately wanders back to Matt Reeves' 2008 sci-fi found-footage horror film, Cloverfield, in which a small group of friends spends a single night fleeing the streets of New York City after a horde of aliens crash-lands in a nearby ocean and destroys everything in their sight. Eight years later, a sequel of sorts was released, but upon first glance, there doesn't appear to be much of a connection between Reeves' action-heavy monster movie and the decidedly quieter, more restrained, and mystery-driven chamber thriller devised by Josh Campbell, Matt Stuecken, and Damien Chazelle. The reason is obvious: 10 Cloverfield Lane originated from a spec script by Campbell and Stuecken titled The Cellar. It began its life as an original, standalone psychological horror film. During production, however, the filmmakers noticed core similarities to Cloverfield and decided to make it what producer J.J. Abrams refers to as a "blood relative" or "spiritual successor" to Reeves' 2008 picture. 

To the extent that 10 Cloverfield Lane is a sequel, it stands tall as the most daringly original sequel since Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects. In the same manner as Zombie's ultraviolent masterpiece, 10 Cloverfield Lane not only refrains from retracing the steps already walked by its predecessor, but emerges as the superior film. An argument could even be made that the filmmakers would have done themselves a favor by erasing the name "Cloverfield" from the title, divorcing themselves from any association whatsoever, and sticking to their original title. 

For the majority of its runtime, 10 Cloverfield Lane delivers a taut, tense, contained psychological nightmare that shrewdly observes the ways in which three ordinary people grapple with extraordinary circumstances, how they respond to fear of the unknown, and how paranoia and mistrust can curdle the most seemingly well-intentioned man into a monster more fearsome than the extraterrestrial creatures who put them in this predicament in the first place. Unfortunately, in the final 15 minutes, the filmmakers, beholden to audience expectations triggered by their titular association with Reeves' earlier film, throw their carefully cultivated ambience of mystery and restraint out the window in favor of a bombastic alien-invasion climax that materializes almost out of thin air. While it isn't bad enough to obliterate the preceding 89 minutes -- and on a technical level, it's solidly executed -- it definitely compromises their impact.

After having an argument with her fiance, Ben (bizarrely voiced by an unseen Bradley Cooper), Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) gathers her belongings and flees her New Orleans apartment, leaving nothing but her engagement ring behind. While driving along the road of rural Louisiana, she hears news reports on the radio about a series of blackouts in several major cities when all of a sudden, a truck rams into her car and throws her off the road, knocking her unconscious. When she regains consciousness, Michelle finds herself alone in a bunker beneath a farmhouse, clad in an undershirt and underwear, her leg severely injured and chained to the brick wall that surrounds her. The owner of the bunker is a morbidly obese older man named Howard (John Goodman), who claims he discovered Michelle on the road and saved her life. Confused, disoriented, and petrified, Michelle asks to be taken to a hospital or at least handed a phone so she can call her family or ex-fiance, but Howard drops a major bombshell: allegedly, while Michelle was unconscious, the United States was attacked and the air outside is now toxic, meaning they're two of the last people on Earth alive.

While exploring what is promised to be her new home for the next one or two years, Michelle comes across a third survivor of the alleged attack, Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), Howard's construction worker who helped him build the bunker and broke his arm while forcing himself inside. As time passes, the trio begins to adapt to their new, albeit bizarre, circumstances, learning to bond with and depend on each other for survival and human connection, while remaining oblivious to and fearful of the activity transpiring just above their roof. However, when Howard's stories of a daughter who left town with his ex-wife are contradicted and his mental state gradually deteriorates, Michelle and Emmett find their trust in their so-called savior waning and conspire behind his back to devise their escape, realizing that taking their chances outside might be safer than remaining under the thumb of an aggressive and short-tempered doomsayer on the inside.

Right off the bat, the setup of 10 Cloverfield Lane plays like a gender-reversed remake of Misery. As in Rob Reiner's 1990 psychological horror classic, the protagonist gets into a car accident, loses consciousness, is discovered by a stranger, carried back to their home, and nursed back to health. Instead of a renowned male author, the victim is a young woman; instead of an overweight, seemingly friendly female fan of her patient's novels, the supposed savior is an overweight, seemingly friendly older gentleman. Paul injured his legs so badly that he was confined to a bed and wheelchair; Michelle injured her legs as well, but needs only a pair of crutches, thus granting her the mobility to move around without assistance. Like Annie Wilkes before him, Howard has the humanity and wherewithal to save Michelle's life and provide her with the basic essentials to keep her alive and comfortable (an IV, food, a mattress), but his capricious temper, growing obsession, and potentially violent past compel her to venture beyond the allegedly safe confines of her savior-turned-captor's home. Also like Annie, Howard has a tendency to explode into tirades and insists that Michelle start showing him appreciation for saving her life. The major wrinkle comes in the form of Emmett, a third party who lives with Howard and Michelle and quickly develops a brotherly camaraderie with his female housemate. 

Damien Chazelle was contracted to rewrite the draft penned by Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken and direct 10 Cloverfield Lane, but once his feature-length expansion of his short film, Whiplash, received the funding to enter production, he dropped out in the directing capacity and was replaced by Dan Trachtenberg, who makes his directorial debut. The similarities to the setup of Misery notwithstanding, the trio of screenwriters concocts a story that deviates radically from the action-oriented road traversed by Drew Goddard's screenplay. In Cloverfield, a sixtet of friends are throwing their friend a going-away party in his New York apartment when out of nowhere, a nearby building explodes and the head of the Statue of Liberty is flung into the street, forcing everyone to run for their lives. Cars are overturned, bridges are obliterated, and the culprits appear to be gargantuan, spiderlike aliens whose bites contain a lethal venom. The horror emanated from the blunt, fundamental fear of unpredictable, painful death which lurked around every corner. It was loud, fast-paced, and nerve-wracking. The entire movie is one prolonged chase, narrowing its focus intimately on six sympathetic young adults united by one mutual objective: get the hell out of Manhattan before they're devoured. 

For 10 Cloverfield Lane, the screenwriters adopt a tonally opposite approach. Instead of six protagonists, they limit them to three. Instead of running throughout the war-torn streets of Manhattan, these people are confined to a strategically prepared and organized bunker. Instead of making the aliens the primary antagonists from start to finish, the real source of horror is the fear of the unknown. The fear of aliens, of nuclear fallout, of contaminated air, brings out the ugliest and most inhumane impulses in the person whose initial intention is ironically to protect those under his wing from outside dangers. Chazelle, Campbell, and Stuecken withhold key information about Howard's backstory and ulterior motivations as well as what's actually transpiring aboveground, rendering us imprisoned and disoriented alongside their two captives, with only Howard's claims to hold on to. The writers restrict the action to a single, confined setting and relay exposition via dialogue by Howard and Emmett. What makes said expository dialogue more engrossing is the fact that it's delivered by an unreliable narrator and parroted by his overly trusting employee. The script doesn't entirely confirm or invalidate the veracity of Howard's far-out assertions, leaving many of them uncertain. 

10 Cloverfield Lane generates a suffocating miasma of paranoia, uncertainty, and suspense through the universally relatable fear of the unknown, questioning the source of the sounds emanating aboveground. In order to put us on Howard's side, at least in the beginning, the writers lend credence to his assertion of toxic air with two unsettling sights, both viewed from the viewport at his airlock: a pair of bloodied, decomposing pigs named Frank and Mildred, and the arrival of a neighbor named Leslie (Suzanne Cryer), who begs in vain to be let inside and whose face is covered in lesions. Because Howard's ulterior motives are never clarified, the story constantly challenges our sympathy and allegiance toward him. One moment, Howard entices us to join his side. He's been preparing for this catastrophe for a long time, he shared a close relationship with his daughter, Megan, whose mother turned her against him and ran off, leaving him alone with no one except a pair of now-dead pigs. The next moment, everything he said might have been a lie to elicit our (and Michelle's) pity, and he might be the man who abducted and murdered a teenage girl named Brittany, who went to high school with Emmett's little sister. Does Howard even have a daughter named Megan? Did she really leave town with her mother? Was Howard ever married? Why was Brittany ever in his bunker? Did he really killer her? To the writers' credit, these crucial questions are posed and left unanswered, to the film's benefit rather than detriment.

Once Michelle makes her escape from the bunker, the movie should have ended with her driving away in Leslie's car. Instead, the writers make the biggest misstep of their screenplay in the final 15 minutes: incorporating the arrival of a biomechanical alien spacecraft. That's right. There was an attack, but it wasn't Russia. It was aliens all along. They've come to Earth to kill humankind, and the toxic air is caused by a green gas that sprays out of their ship. While this reveal doesn't come entirely out of thin air, with the writers having dropped aural hints along the way, it feels largely extraneous, shoehorned into the climax for a generic sci-fi explanation. It shifts the tone from what was originally a restrained, quiet, ambiguous psychological study to a sci-fi action thriller, replete with an action-packed chase through a field, another car crash, an explosion, and implausible close calls: an alien reaches Howard's driver-side door when Michelle runs into his truck, but generously allows her to close the door anyway; after Michelle conveniently manages to throw a Molotov cocktail in an alien's mouth, the resultant explosion causes its tentacles to release Howard's truck and send it crashing to the ground, but Michelle is protected with enough plot armor to survive. All this climactic standoff succeeds in is drawing an obligatory, razor-thin connection to its 2008 predecessor (in name mostly).

Dan Trachtenberg favors ambiguity and mystery over gore, eliciting palpable tension through John Goodman's unpredictable performance. In terms of violent imagery, Trachtenberg offers glimpses of Frank and Mildred's mangled carcasses from the viewport, against which a delirious Leslie bangs her head repeatedly. He strategically withholds the appearances of the aliens. Following in the footsteps of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, Trachtenberg emphasizes the sounds made by his extraterrestrial invaders as they crawl atop a shed in which Michelle hides. Speaking of Michelle, Trachtenberg maintains his focus on her throughout the entirety of his movie's 104-minute runtime. Prior to her escape, he confines the action to the interior of Howard's bunker. 

The reason 10 Cloverfield Lane is so beautifully contained is because of its single setting and central trio of protagonists. The setting is Howard's bunker beneath his farmhouse, and cinematographer Jeff Cutter maximizes it for every ounce of beauty, spaciousness, and claustrophobia. He uses a pan shot to present an expansive view that familiarizes us with every room and amenity: there's a living room with a TV surrounded by DVDs and VHS cassettes, and two couches; a kitchen with a dining table; shelves of classic board games; a bathroom with a toilet and shower, covered by a curtain designed with a duck. These details combat the threat of the unknown danger lurking aboveground with an air of cozy domesticity, safety, familiarity, and simplicity, hearkening back to a happier and simpler time prior to the invasion. Insert shots highlight objects that are crucial to Michelle's escape and indicative of Howard's deadly authority: a keychain and gun in his pants pocket. A close-up of Michelle's hand flirtatiously caressing Emmett's instills anxiety over Howard's uncontainable jealousy. 

Cutter maximizes facial close-ups to immerse us in the captives' rapidly mounting apprehension, cutting back and forth between close-ups of the trio's faces, especially Michelle's and Emmett's as their eyes glance nervously at one another, petrified of Howard's next explosion. Michelle's crawl through an air vent to reactivate the air filtration system, devoid of light, evokes the claustrophobia of Dallas' surprise attack in Alien. Cutter films the outside horrors from Michelle's perspective behind the viewport at the airlock and through the wooden slats of Howard's shed: Leslie smashing her head repeatedly against the window, an alien slinking across the field from inside the crops. He introduces Howard in knee-level shots and close-ups of his hands to build anticipation, leading up to the reveal of his bloated, bearded face in close-up. 

10 Cloverfield Lane boasts three sequences of heart-stopping dread: the first dinner in which Howard explodes at Michelle for flirting with Emmett, the game of Taboo in which Howard frightens Michelle and Emmett into believing that he's on to their escape plan, and the moment Howard assembles Michelle and Emmett around a barrel of perchloric acid. Regarding the latter, which climaxes with the shocking and devastating death of Emmett, Cutter omits Emmett's face from the frame when Howard pulls the trigger on it, zooming in on Michelle's heartbroken, guilt-ridden, paralyzed reaction. The second the bullet is discharged, the sound designers immerse us in Michelle's subjectivity, blotting out all sound with an incessant ringing that reduces Howard's voice to a barely discernible whisper.

Prior to her starring role in 10 Cloverfield Lane, Mary Elizabeth Winstead had already established herself as a certified scream queen, appearing in a total of five horror films: The Ring Two (which marked her feature debut), Final Destination 3, the remake of Black Christmas, Death Proof, and the prequel to John Carpenter's remake of The Thing. 10 Cloverfield Lane marks her sixth contribution to the genre, and while I haven't yet seen her work in Black Christmas, based on its critical reception of 14% on Rotten Tomatoes, I feel confident enough to say Michelle represents her greatest role to date. The one that comes the closest to Michelle is Kate Lloyd, the final girl of The Thing, which retroactively functions as a training exercise for her performance as Michelle. 

As embodied by the beautiful, hard-edged Winstead, Michelle is smart, resilient, proactive, cunning, quick-thinking, resourceful, and, when needed, ferocious, all the qualities that constitute a rootable, badass heroine. She uses her innate talent for clothes designing to fashion a makeshift hazmat suit and gas mask out of a shower curtain, soda bottle, duct tape, scissors, and other stolen supplies. She fashions a weapon out of a crutch by shaving its leg down to a wooded tip. When one plan fails, Michelle gets to work on another one. She doesn't give up. She uses the objects at her disposal to her advantage, at one point utilizing the momentary distraction afforded by a power outage to grab a beer bottle off the kitchen table and smash it over Howard's head. 

Winstead imbues Michelle with grit, tenacity, and athleticism. Even when Michelle is terrified and desperate, begging Howard to let her go and not hurt her, Winstead keeps her voice steady and controlled so as to maintain her composure and dignity. She's too strong to break down, only coming close when she loses her confidant in a brutal and sudden manner, but her eyes can't help but betray vulnerability, turning red and welling with tears. In a profoundly written and beautifully acted dialogue between Michelle and Emmett in which they confess their private life regrets from the opposite sides of Michelle's room, Winstead -- reminiscing about a time she witnessed a father abusing his daughter in a hardware store and allowed fear to prevent her from taking action -- evokes Jodie Foster during her moving "screaming of the lambs" monologue in The Silence of the Lambs. Even though the characters are separated by a wall, the intimate camerawork and fluid editing make it feel as if they're in the same room.

In a stark contrast to his warmly comedic roles as Dan Conner in Roseanne and Delbert McClintock in Arachnophobia -- the latter of which he played a spider's worst nightmare: an exterminator! -- John Goodman is cast majorly against type as Howard Stambler, a short-tempered, domineering control freak whose past is shaded in suspicion and obscurity and whose ego can be as oversized as his stomach. Maximizing his Falstaffian physique for maximum intimidation, Goodman delivers an eye-opening, jaw-dropping performance that should have earned him a nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the 89th Academy Awards. As Howard, Goodman is unhinged, unpredictable, and imposing, vacillating masterfully between dictatorial, power-hungry bully, earnestly paranoid doomsayer, and forgiving, compassionate, hospitable savior with a self-deprecating sense of humor and eccentric reverence for conservative family values (the woman of the house will "learn" to love cooking and forever remain a child or, at most, a "little princess").

His penetrating eyes emanate homicidal rage. His breathing is heavy and labored. One moment, Howard is sitting at the head of his dinner table, calmly eating spaghetti whose homemade sauce, he freely admits, is just okay. The next, he slams his fat fists on the table and erupts into a resentful, paranoid tirade at the sight of an assumed slight. After a demonstration of successful teamwork, Goodman fires up "Tell Him" by The Exciters on the jukebox and busts out in a goofy dance, shaking his rear back and forth. Even in his most lighthearted moments, the corners of his mouth appear turned down in a near-permanent frown. His silences can be scarier than his outbursts because you can never predict what he's going to say or do from scene to scene. 

At one point, as Emmett "spoils" Howard's first dinner as a newfound family with his wisecracking, Goodman orders him to stop, closes his eyes, and clenches his fists repeatedly, either to convey frustration or the emergence of a heart attack. It's a performance that matches Kathy Bates' Oscar-winning and star-making turn in its terror, humor, and nuance. Similar to Mrs. Carmody in The Mist, Howard reminds us that sometimes, humanity can breed creatures more vile, dangerous, and horrifying than those that may exist in outer space. 

As the third wheel of sorts, John Gallagher Jr. provides a pillar of comfort and support to Michelle, imbuing his innocent country boy with loads of charm, chivalry, protectiveness, a Southern drawl, and a warm heart. During a tense dinner, Emmett is the type of jokester who's unafraid to break the ice and lighten the mood with jokes and the confession of a silly lifelong dream to cover his body from head to toe in tattoos, even if it's in his best interest to just shut up and eat. He isn't a dummy, however. When Emmett and Michelle team up and conspire to steal Howard's gun, tie him up, and plot their escape, Emmett manipulates Howard into throwing out the shower curtain by positing that Michelle may have contaminated it, thus providing the main element of their hazmat suit.

Because 10 Cloverfield Lane is presented in a conventional third-person narrative mode, as opposed to the first-person found-footage style employed by the original, there is a musical score composed by Bear McCreary, and it's somber, suspenseful, propulsive, and riveting. As employed by Trachtenberg, McCreary's strains are neither over nor underused, playing mainly over the opening and closing scenes to accompany Michelle on her contrasting escapes: initially running from her relationship with her fiance because it's getting too real, and finally driving to Houston to assist fellow survivors of the invasion, passing up the easy opportunity to head for a safe zone (a choice she's symbolically made her entire life up until this point) in Baton Rouge. 

To propel the story forward at a steady clip, editor Stefan Grube uses quick cuts of Michelle gathering supplies and creating her hazmat suit and gas mask. In the most purely lighthearted sequence, Grube stitches together a montage depicting the trio adapting to their new post-apocalyptic routine in the bunker: playing board games, piecing together a puzzle, making peanut butter sandwiches, setting up lamps, watching a horror film (how apropos for their situation), eating dinner together as a makeshift family, set to the upbeat tune of "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tommy James and the Shondells. In a chamber drama characterized by nail-biting tension and suffocating entrapment, this montage is a breath of fresh air, contrasting the preceding mistrust with the jovial bonding and mutual respect that develop from getting to know people and establishing a day-to-day lifestyle. 

As was the case with The Devil's Rejects, 10 Cloverfield Lane hits a few logical snags en route to its destination, two of which concern Howard's intellect and capabilities. Firstly, Michelle locks Howard in her room and takes the extra precaution of knocking a stack of buckets in front of the door. Within seconds, Howard reappears on the outside in front of Michelle. It's never shown or explained how he managed to escape. Did he suddenly develop the gift of teleportation? When Michelle kicks over the barrel of perchloric acid, Howard falls headfirst into the corrosive puddle for no reason other than to elicit an audience cheer. Did he slip on the acid before it reached his feet? Did his fear of the acid impair his judgment? No, the truth is none of the filmmakers could think up a valid excuse for Howard to burn his face, so Trachtenberg settled for the "refrigerator movie" approach and probably directed, "Just fall into it face-first. Who cares?" 

Late-stage logic gaps and a disappointingly generic alien-attack climax aside, 10 Cloverfield Lane is a brilliantly written, tensely directed, hauntingly scored, tightly edited psychological horror film elevated by a trio of compelling performances, especially a blood-freezing John Goodman. Viewers who are deceived by the title into expecting a straight sequel to Cloverfield are liable to feel frustrated by the emphasis on tense atmosphere over alien-on-human combat and lack of clear-cut answers regarding Howard's sketchy backstory. But for the more open-minded and intellectually inclined horror fans who can treat both sci-fi horror films as distinct entities, 10 Cloverfield Lane rewards your patience with a deliciously crafted exercise in sustained trepidation. And while the aliens do make an appearance in the final reel, John Goodman's penetrating glare is enough to send them slithering back to outer space.

8.2/10