10 Cloverfield Lane
Greetings, 10 Cloverfield Lane is a 2016 film and the second instalment in the Cloverfield anthology franchise which began with the 2008 movie, Cloverfield. Despite being of the same series, the sequel doesn’t use the found footage style that the original was famed for but utilizes a more traditional third person narrative. The cast is small in number but boasts a highly talented membership which includes John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as well as John Gallagher Junior as the main trio. Bradley Cooper can also be heard as the voice of the main protagonist’s ex-boyfriend while Suzanne Cryer has a brief role as a disease stricken neighbour. Other instalments in the series include a 2018 film named the Cloverfield Paradox and another, with the working title of Overlord, scheduled for release in October of this year. The soundtrack was scored by Bear McCreary who had previously conducted the music for television shows including the Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica.
The film begins with a woman called Michelle clearing her possessions out of her home after she breaks up with her boyfriend. She decides to drive far away from New Orleans and travels as far as rural Louisiana when the radio stations begin reporting that major cities are suffering from unexplained blackouts. As the reports begin to flood in, Michelle is hit by a speeding truck and the impact knocks her car off the road. The collision causes her to fall into a state of unconsciousness and Michelle wakes up to discover she is being held in a secure room that is not dissimilar to a cell. The protagonist realizes to her horror that she has been handcuffed to the wall and that her phone is placed on the other side of the room. The wounds she had sustained from the vehicular accident had also been tended to. It isn’t long before the door is opened and a man named Howard makes an appearance.
Howard explains to a distressed Michelle that she has been placed in a safe location, an underground bunker, as the world up above is now uninhabitable. He believes that the air was poisoned by a nuclear or chemical fallout and theorizes that the attack was carried out by Extra-terrestrial or Russian forces. Michelle is hostile towards Howard in the beginning, even managing to physically assault him in her captive and wounded state. As time goes by she becomes more sceptical of Howard’s story as she clearly hears a roaming car above her room but nonetheless she begins to calm down. Howard decides that she is now free to explore the rest of the bunker and introduces her to fellow resident Emmet before providing evidence of the fallout to Michelle. He takes her to the viewport of the exit hatch and shows her two dead and deteriorating pigs that had been caught up in the attack. Michelle is still unbelieving and decides, during their first dinner together, to steal Howard’s keys and try to escape.
I really enjoyed this film and consider it to be a big improvement upon the original. I will most likely remember this film in the years to come while I can only recall the general gist of the previous instalment which didn’t have much in the way of memorable or interesting characters. I liked the tense atmosphere that 10 Cloverfield managed to create and that it could still entertain despite its very limited setting. The three actors did a great job in carrying the movie forward and I thought that John Goodman gave a particularly noteworthy performance as the creepy and unstable Howard. I aim to watch the sequels too at some point although I am aware that the most recent entry, Cloverfield Paradox, was panned by critics.
Plot=8/10
Characters=8/10
Special Effects=8
Overall=8/10
Quote of the Day
I did warn you not to trust me.
Petyr Baelish
Game of Thrones
