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| Image Source: imdb.com |
After a car accident, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)
awakes chained to a bed in an underground bunker. She meets two men who claim
the air outside is toxic after a widespread chemical attack.
Like Cloverfield (2008), 10 Cloverfield Lane was filmed low
budget and in secret. The marketing was fittingly secretive so it was the
trailer for this film that really hooked me. I think it’s wrong to call 10
Cloverfield Lane a sequel. I have called it so up to now but it’s really more of
a stand-alone thriller in the Cloverfield setting. The tagline “monsters come
in many forms” was something I kept in mind when I was watching the film. This meant
that I wasn’t disappointed when I wasn’t met with the monster movie that some
might be expecting.
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| Image Source: imdb.com |
10 Cloverfield Lane is a brilliantly crafted psychological
thriller that makes you feel as claustrophobic and uneasy as the characters. It
is tense and shock packed from the beginning to end but never predictable. Quite
the opposite – the plot manages to get inside your head. You know that John
Goodman’s ‘Howard’ is uncomfortably controlling and you fear him for his erratic
behaviour and violent temper, but any prior knowledge of the Cloverfield premise
is screaming at you to stay inside. Although it is a long time since I have
seen the original Cloverfield which meant that I was unfamiliar with the
specifics of the world outside the bunker. This weirdly benefited my
experience as a viewer who wasn’t sure who to believe.
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| Image Source: imdb.com |
Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s ‘Michelle’ is the perfect thriller
protagonist. You want to root for her because her actions are so smart. Like the
audience can also do, she picks up on the subtle but critical information to
plan her escape. However, John Goodman steals the show. Flipping between
fatherly and terrifying with ease. Shining in this antagonist role, his performance
is truly unsettling for all the right reasons.
10 Cloverfield Lane’s exploration of monsters in human form
makes an edge of your seat thriller that I loved and would definitely recommend.
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