Franchises: Cloverfield. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

If you've read my review of it, you'd know that I love Cloverfield. I may not have known about it until less than a month before it came out but, once I did, like everybody else, my curiosity was immediately piqued, both by the cardboard display of the movie's poster I saw at the theater on New Year's Eve of 2007 and TV spots throughout January. And when I finally did see it nearly a full year later, I thought it was awesome: a really cool, intense, and realistic blending of the "found footage" horror aesthetic with the kaiju genre. To this day, it's still one of my favorite found footage movies, and given its enormous success and the many unanswered questions as to the nature of the monster and the ending, which cryptically suggested it may still be alive, I was both expecting and more than up for a sequel. But while J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves talked about possible ideas for one, both at the time of the film's release and in the months and years that followed, nothing ever came of it, so I then figured Cloverfield would remain a one-and-done, which I was fine with. Then, just like the first film, this appeared virtually out of nowhere, at least for me. I can remember randomly seeing a TV spot for it, either right before or right after it was released, and being completely surprised that they finally did a sequel. But just from what little I saw, I could tell it was a much different movie than the first, one not done in the found footage format, starring John Goodman, and seeming like it would suggest more than it actually showed. Regardless, I didn't think much about it, as I never saw any other TV spots, and even though I did see some non-spoiler reviews from people who I watched regularly at the time, I was in no real hurry to see it. In fact, just like the first one, I didn't see it until over a year after it was released, when I found the Blu-Ray cheap at Best Buy. And also just like the first, when I saw it, I thought it was awesome. While a completely different movie from the first, and I still don't really understand how Abrams thought this story tied itself to it, when judged on its own merits, I think it's a great thriller, with excellent performances all-around, especially from Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and a very well done, claustrophobic setting. I do have some mixed feelings about the ending but, on the whole, this is great stuff.

Following an argument with her fiance, Ben, a young woman named Michelle packs her suitcase and leaves her home in New Orleans. Come nightfall, she gets a cellphone call from Ben, pleading with her to come back, and that running away won't help things. On the radio, she hears reports of blackouts across the Southern Seaboard, and just as Ben calls again, another vehicle slams into her side, and she tumbles off the road and into a large ravine. She awakens to find an IV hooked into her arm, and then sees she's chained to the wall in a concrete room with no windows and a large, vault-like door. After improvising and managing to get a hold of her phone, only to find she has no service, a very large and imposing man appears, giving her some food, crutches, and a pick for the chain, and tells her that, despite what she thinks, no one is looking for her. After she makes an unsuccessful attempt to escape, the man, Howard, explains that there's been a massive attack, that she was in an accident, and he picked her up as he was driving by. He also tells her that they're in a bunker beneath his farmhouse near Lake Charles, that the air on the surface has been contaminated by fallout, and everyone else is dead. Later, Michelle meets Emmett, a neighbor who helped Howard build the bunker, and Howard shows her that it's well-stocked, with a very comfortable living area. When she's still doubtful about his claims of an attack, Howard lets her look out the main door's window, and she sees the horribly eviscerated bodies of two pigs. However, when she notices Howard's truck, she remembers that it rammed into her. She tells Emmett about this, feeling that Howard actually abducted her and is lying about the attack, but Emmett claims he saw signs of it himself and voluntarily came to the bunker. Still not convinced, Michelle manages to steal Howard's keys, but just as she's about to escape, a hysterical woman appears outside, with red lesions on her face, and angrily demands to be let in. Later, Howard admits that he caused her accident while frantically trying to get back to his bunker. The three of them begin to settle into life down in the bunker, with Howard even telling Michelle about his long-lost daughter, Megan, whom he's sure is dead. However, Michelle and Emmett find evidence that, despite what's happening on the surface, a more immediate danger is in the bunker with them.

Though they share the name, the reason why this film is so different from Cloverfield is simple: like many of the direct-to-video Hellraiser films, it started out as something unrelated. It was originally a spec script by writers Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken called The Cellar, which was bought by Paramount Pictures in 2012, with J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot company developing it for Paramount's Insurge Pictures division. Though they intended to keep it within the budget range of just $5 million, the type of small movie Insurge specialized in, it ultimately cost somewhere from $13-15 million. Also, by the time it was released in March of 2016, almost a year-and-a-half after shooting was completed (Abrams didn't even come up with the final title until after he finished directing Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Insurge had gone under. In any case, somewhere during production, Abrams and the other filmmakers got the idea that the film was similar in themes to Cloverfield, with he himself saying, "I think you'll find that you'll understand the connection when you see the whole thing." To be honest, I never have, except for the title and the actual name of "Cloverfield" appearing on a mailbox near the end. I figured that, once we got to the end, we would see that the "attack" Howard mentions and the fallout is tied to the monster's attack on Manhattan but, while the climax does go in a direction you're likely not expecting, it has absolutely no ties to the previous film. I still love this movie, and I'll later talk about another proposed connection between this and Cloverfield that makes more sense to me, but I don't get how Abrams thinks, sometimes.

Initially, Damien Chazelle, who'd been a writer on The Last Exorcism Part II and Grand Piano, was intended to direct 10 Cloverfield Lane, as he'd been brought in to do a rewrite on the screenplay, but he instead opted to direct his original screenplay, Whiplash. Bad Robot then went with Dan Trachtenberg, who'd previously just directed commercials and some short films, including the 2011 film, Portal: No Escape, based on the popular video game. For my money, he more than proved himself capable of feature filmmaking with this, as he got great performances out of his actors, used the claustrophobic setting very well, and showed off a real knack for visual storytelling. But, even though the film was a big hit, making $110.2 million on its small budget, Trachtenberg's directing career hasn't exactly taken off, though not for lack of trying. He's been attached to various projects over the years, like the Uncharted movie, but he either left them or they didn't get made. After the pilot episode for The Boys, his most notable film since 10 Cloverfield Lane has been Prey, the very successful, direct-to-Hulu Predator movie. (Personally, I did like Prey, but I also think it was a tad overrated and not as great as the first two Predator movies.)

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is an actor whom I've really come to like over the years, as you can usually depend on her to play strong, resourceful, and likable characters, and her role here of Michelle is no exception. As soon as she awakens in this small, barren, concrete room after she gets knocked off the road, and finds her leg chained to the wall, she, despite being understandably terrified, doesn't lose her head. Instead, she tries to find a way to reach her cellphone, which is across the room from her. She uses the IV stand to pull it towards her and then tries to find a signal, only to be interrupted when she first meets Howard when he shows up to bring her some food and crutches. Once she's alone again, she takes advantage of him giving her the pick to the chain on her leg and the crutches, first by putting her pants on and then by taking the knob off the end of one of the crutches and sharpening it into a spear. And when Howard doesn't come back of his own volition, Michelle forces him to by opening up an air vent in the wall, then using a matchbook, cloth, and one of the crutches to create a torch, which she shoves into the vent. The fire alarm goes off and Howard comes stomping down, and though Michelle doesn't make it out, as he restrains and sedates her, even he has to admire her fighting spirit. Despite his insistence that there's been an attack and that everyone outside their bunker is dead, Michelle is suspicious, especially when she hears what sounds like a car above her room at one point. And when she recognizes Howard's truck outside as the vehicle that slammed into her, she's sure he abducted her and that his claims about the attack and the long term effects are a bunch of bull. Still determined to escape, and noting his jealousy and general intolerance towards Emmett, Michelle gets overly friendly with him, causing Howard to snap and corner her against the wall. She then takes the opportunity to swipe his keys from his belt buckle and, upon hearing another vehicle outside, makes her move. But when she sees the condition and behavior of the woman who gets out of the car, she realizes Howard may know what he's talking about.

Michelle also goes through a very defined arc over the course of the movie. At the beginning, we see her packing up and running out on her fiance, simply because the two of them had a fight. We never learn what the fight was about, if this was the first time they ever fought and she just couldn't handle it, or if they've fought many times before, but her running away is apparently the latest example of nearly a lifetime of her not taking a stand or able to face any sort of conflict. After she sees the diseased, dying

woman outside the bunker's main door, she later confesses to Emmett that, several years earlier, she saw a man being mean and abusive to her little girl, even hitting her at one point, but as much as she wanted to say something, Michelle decided to run instead. It hurts all the more because she knows what it's like to have an abusive father, whose rage her brother always took the brunt of to spare her. Thus, when she and Emmett discover that Howard is a dangerously disturbed man who has abducted girls in

the past and is planning to have Michelle replace the previous one, whom he likely killed, she realizes the two of them need to get out. She uses her clothes-designing skills to begin creating a makeshift hazmat suit, using a shower curtain for the suit itself and a plastic soda bottle as the mask. It comes to a head after Howard kills Emmett, as Michelle finishes the suit, determined more than ever to escape. And when Howard discovers the suit, she proves to be harder to contain than he figured, using his supplies down in the bunker against him and managing to reach the

outside using the ventilation system to get to the air filtration unit, which she had to get to earlier to turn back on when it went out. Finally, when she makes it outside and sees the truth of what's going on, as well as has to save herself again, she decides to head into the "eye of the storm" to lend some help, rather than simply running for cover like she always did before.

John Goodman, of course, is an actor I've liked for a long, long time, and he gives one of his most ambiguous, nuanced, and ultimately terrifying performances as Howard. It's amazing how many times the film not only changes your perception of exactly who he is but also how long it manages to sustain it each time. In his first appearance, when he checks on Michelle after she awakens in the bunker, he comes off as very imposing and sinister, not just in how he's chained her to the wall but in how he tells her, "I'm going to keep you alive," in a tone that suggests he has ulterior motives aside from simply wanting to help her. His telling her that nobody is searching for her initially comes off as a threat, and when he later tells her about the attack which has supposedly wiped out everyone else, it goes back and forth from sounding plausible to an excuse to keep them down there, especially when he starts talking about it possibly being Martians. As he continues going on about how both her and Emmett need to start showing him some appreciation for saving their lives, especially her, and when she sees his truck and remembers that it forced her off the road, it does seem as though he's a madman who's lying just to keep them isolated. He also proves to be very intolerant towards Emmett, seeming to not be able to stand the very sight of him, and immediately develops a possessiveness towards Michelle, becoming very agitated when she and Emmett begin to bond or when Emmett so much as touches her. Howard even acts as though he's Michelle's father, going as far as to speak for her when he tells Emmett that they don't appreciate the jokes he makes at the dinner table, and make her promise to behave when he becomes enraged at her becoming touchy-feely with Emmett. But when Michelle attempts to escape, only to see the woman outside, desperate to get in, and dying from some kind of horrific skin lesions that could be the result of chemicals in the air, it looks as though Howard may not be as crazy as he seems.

For a while afterward, Howard is portrayed in a much more positive light, coming off as a well-meaning, if unbalanced, survivalist. He confesses to knocking Michelle off the road, saying he was in a desperate hurry to get back when he realized what was happening and that he accidentally hit her while trying to pass her. He then offers her some vodka he distilled (although it turns out to be awful) and tells her about his daughter, Megan, whom he was seemingly quite close to, and showing Michelle a 

picture of her. He adds that her mother turned her against him and they left for Chicago, lamenting, "People are strange creatures. You can't always convince them that safety is in their own best interest." He also seems resolved that both of them are likely dead from the attack, despite what Michelle tells him. After that, both Michelle and Emmett begin to live comfortably in the bunker with Howard, who even proves to be kind of funny, though not always intentionally. When he confesses that he accidentally

sent Michelle off the road, he adds, "I know I seem like a sensible guy," even though he was earlier talking about Martians (which, according to Emmett, he finds more plausible than zombies), and also commented at one point, "Crazy is building your ark after the flood has already come." When he has Michelle stitch up the cut she left on his forehead when she whacked him with a bottle, talking her through the process, you can hear him breathing heavily and, in a pained voice, he says, "You're doing fine." The sight of him dumping out a big jigsaw

puzzle onto a table, looking closely at the box, as if making sure he has all the pieces or that it's even the right puzzle, also kind of make me kind of smile. When Michelle has to crawl through the vents to switch the air filtration system back on after it malfunctions, Howard tells her how to do so, "You just swing the handle off, then on, off, then on," then pauses for a second, silently reiterating it to himself, and confirms, "That should do it." And, in a bit of unintentional dark humor on his part, he tells her, right before she goes in, "And neither of us will be able to go in and help you if you get stuck... Don't get stuck."

Our perception of Howard changes yet again when, after she manages to get the system working again, Michelle finds a padlocked skylight with the word "HELP" scratched into it, as well as what looks like some blood around the last two letters. She also finds a slightly bloody earring on the floor, identical to the one "Megan" was wearing in her photo, only for Emmett to reveal that that girl is actually Brittney, who went missing several years before. The two of them also find another photo of both Howard and

Brittney, the latter of whom is wearing the very shirt he says was Megan's, and which Michelle happens to be wearing at the moment. Now knowing what a true monster he is, Howard's actions before and after become really disturbing, especially when they're meant to be humorous. When he comes back to them after they've solved the problem with the air filtration, he puts on the song Tell Him on the jukebox, saying, "Problem solving always puts me in a musical mood," and starts dancing, which would be really funny

otherwise. Later, he's watching Pretty in Pink, which he says was one of Megan's favorites, and that's juxtaposed with Emmett trying to sneak away some scissors from the kitchen cabinet without him knowing. And when they're playing charades later, one of the clues is, "Michelle is a...", and it never crosses Howard's mind that the answer is "woman," as he can't think of anything other than "girl" or, even more unsettling, "princess,"; his response to Emmett telling him what it was is an irritated, "Next time, try bein' a little more specific." Speaking of charades,

only he could unintentionally make such a game intense with his clues: "I'm always watching. Always." "I go wherever I want." "I know what you're doing. I see what you're doing." "I know what you're up to." "I see you when you're sleeping!" The more intense he gets when Emmett can't figure it out, the more it seems as though he's on to them, but then, it turns out that his thing was Santa Claus. Michelle blurts it out and Howard confirms she's right, but decides to keep the points since it was Emmett's turn. And yet, the way he looks at them afterward suggests he may now be suspicious.

At the end of the day, we don't know much more about Howard than when we first met him. We know he's a paranoid conspiracy theorist, with beliefs that range from fairly reasonable to full-on maniacal (including one about "mutant space-worms, according to Emmett; though, given what we see during the climax...), but whether or not he ever actually was in the Navy, as both he and Emmett say, is never confirmed. He does seem to know what he's talking about in some areas related to that, like the way he's 

able to use liquid nitrogen in a spray bottle for certain uses, something he said he learned when he had a lot of downtime during his time in the service, and identify the sound of the aircraft above them as something other than an American military chopper, which we learn he is right about. And as for Megan and his ex-wife, we're never sure if they really did leave him because he's crazy, if he killed them, or if they never existed and are just a fantasy he cooked up and is trying to make real, first with Brittney and 

now Michelle (he does wear a wedding ring, but that may be a part of the charade). Regardless, we finally see just how dangerous Howard is when, after he finds the tools Michelle and Emmett took so the former could make her hazmat suit, he brings out a barrel of perchloric acid and, demanding to know what they were doing with them, drops them into the acid to show just how corrosive it is before yelling, "I'm giving you one chance... One chance to answer with some dignity or, I swear to God, you're going into this barrel while you're alive to feel it!" Emmett   

then takes the blame, coming up with an excuse, and apologizing. Howard says he accepts his apology, then pulls his gun out and shoots Emmett point-blank, much to Michelle's horror. Howard then embraces her, believing Emmett's lie he told about how he was making a weapon for himself, and tells her it's okay, before sending her back to her room, as if she is his little girl. After "cleaning up," he comes to Michelle, bringing her some ice cream, both in a bowl and a cone, saying they can have dessert before dinner since, "After all, we can do whatever we want now."  

When Michelle looks at Howard, she sees that he's shaved and is dressed much nicer than before. This is something else that, ordinarily, wouldn't be the least bit threatening, but has some very sinister implications here. Setting the bowl down, saying it was what Megan always preferred, he tells her, "I know that this isn't the life you prefer, and that it isn't easy for you living down here, but I want us to be a happy family, you and me. The mess is all taken care of. So just hang loose, and I'll go get dinner started." That is the last bit of incentive that Michelle needs to make a break for it, but Howard proves very unwilling to let her go.

You might expect Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) to be the underdeveloped, dead-weight, comic relief character who can't die quick enough, but that's not the case at all. Instead, he's a laid back kind of guy who tries to keep things light, often making jokes, and is typically unfazed by Howard's loud, unhinged outbursts. He also comes off as a tad naive, going along with Howard's stories about his past without any questioning, as well as buying into the notion that what's happening on the surface is some kind of attack, having listened to Howard constantly talk about such a thing while he was helping him build the bunker. In fact, his arm being in a sling is a result of him trying to get in with Howard when he saw signs of the attack himself. He also doesn't believe Michelle when she says that Howard forced her off the road and abducted her, insisting that the bunker's purpose is what he says it is, and tells her what he saw, although his clunky description of it doesn't sway her. And when she then says she heard a car outside earlier, Emmett doesn't think that's possible either, buying into Howard's claim of the air being contaminated. Despite this initial rough patch, and Howard's jealousy and overall disdain for him, Emmett becomes fairly close with Michelle and they spend a fair amount of time together. He even tells her about his biggest regret in life, which is how he never went to Louisiana Tech because he was afraid he wouldn't do well academically, as he only got in because of his athletic achievements. Michelle notes that, had he gone, he may have died in the attack, and Emmett jokes, "Yeah, lucky me, right? Lucky us." And when she, in turn, opens up about her regret that she didn't help the little girl whose father was abusing her, Emmett tells her, "Look, we're here. We're alive. And that means somethin'. It's gotta."

Like before, Emmett initially doesn't believe Michelle when she tells him she found evidence that Howard is a horrible monster, but realizes it's true when she shows him the photo of "Megan," only for him to recognize the girl as Brittney. After they find that other photograph, and realize what Howard may have in store for Michelle, they talk about what they need to do, with Michelle coming up with a makeshift hazmat suit for one of them to use to escape and go for help, while the other keeps Howard tied up and 

disarmed. They work together in this plot, with Emmett sneaking away some of the tools Michelle needs, and also gets Howard to discard the shower curtain by playing to his paranoia, suggesting Michelle may have brought something in from the outside through the air filtration unit. But then, Howard discovers they've been taking tools behind his back, and when he threatens to kill them with the tub of perchloric acid, Emmett, like Michelle's brother when their father abused them, stands up and

takes the brunt of it. He claims that he was making a weapon so he could get his hands on Howard's gun, that, "I want her to respect me the way that she respects you." He apologizes and Howard accepts his apology, right before he shoots him right in the head and dissolves his body in the acid.

It's during the film's opening that Dan Trachtenberg shows off that penchant for purely visual storytelling I mentioned before, with the first bit of dialogue not coming until about five minutes in, and Michelle herself not saying her first lines until after the ten-minute mark. It opens on a shot of the New Orleans skyline, pulls back to reveal it's looking through a window, giving us a look at some of Michelle's designs for dresses hanging on the wall, pans back further to show a picture of her and her fiance, Ben, on a dresser, and then, the dresser suddenly rocks as 

she begins pulling clothes out of one of its drawers. After she throws various items and other clothes into a box and suitcase, she then calls somebody, likely Ben, but because the only audio is the music score, we can only speculate as to what the conversation is about. She then tearfully hangs up and heads out, with the camera panning around a corner and stopping on a close-up of an engagement ring. The opening continues with overhead shots of Michelle driving across a bridge and then into the countryside, the wide vistas and horizon being the complete opposite

of what we're going to see for nearly all of the rest of the movie. Come nightfall, she stops to get gas, and there's an interesting wide shot of the station itself, making it come off as the only light in the middle of a completely black void. As she stands outside at the pumps, there's an ominous shot of a truck pulling up behind her and its headlights staying on for an uncomfortable amount of time, before we get a reverse shot where all we see of the driver is his reflection in the left-hand mirror. When you re-  

watch the movie, you inevitably wonder if this is Howard, stalking Michelle before he forces her off the road, but you never get a good enough look at the truck or the driver to be sure. Once she's back on the road, she gets a call from Ben and answers it, but doesn't say anything, as he begs her to come back (Bradley Cooper voices Ben). She eventually ends the call, then turns on the radio, hearing a news report about blackouts across the Southern Seaboard, when Ben calls again. Before Michelle can even 

considering answering, she's suddenly hit by a tremendous impact on her left side. We don't see the vehicle that hit her, but we get a lot of very rapid editing as we see both exterior and interior shots of her car spinning around, then going through the guardrail and tumbling down into a ravine, intermixed with the very brief opening credits.

Trachtenberg takes a similar approach to Michelle first waking up in Howard's bunker. It starts on her face and slowly pulls back as she regains consciousness, pans down her arm to show an IV tube inserted to it, and pulls back as she sits up and looks at the stand next to her, while the cement wall behind her clues us in that she's in no hospital. That's confirmed when the camera pulls back further and she throws off the cover on her lower half to reveal that her right leg not only has a brace but is also chained to a pipe on the wall. She then looks over to see the

ominous door to this room, before it cuts to a wide-shot revealing just how barren and oppressive it is. After Michelle struggles and manages to reach her cellphone, only to find she can't get a signal, Howard is gradually introduced, first by the sounds of his approaching footsteps, then a very brief glimpse of him through a slat in the door, a shot of his legs as he walks in and stands there, and a close-up of his holstered gun when he bends down and puts a tray of food beside Michelle. When he picks up the IV stand,

we hear his voice before we finally see his face, which is shot in an imposing manner as he stands over Michelle, setting the stand back up and reattaching the IV bag. There's a similar build-up to the uncomfortable reveal that he's suddenly shaved near the end of the movie, as it shows him walking in with both a cone and a bowl of ice-cream, first focusing on his hands and then on Michelle as she looks up, before it cuts to a close-up of his clean-shaven face. Going back to the movie's beginning, 

Emmett's presence is initially just alluded to, when Michelle and Howard hear him fumbling around in the next room, and Howard storms in there and is heard yelling at him, along with a glimpse of some shelves right outside Michelle's door rattling as he seemingly beats on him. This not only lets us know that there's someone else in the bunker but also initially suggests that Howard may be an abusive father (which he may have actually been).

Because of the very claustrophobic and limited setting we're in for much of the movie, it could be very hard to film it in such a way to where it doesn't become visually boring, but Trachtenberg manages to pull that off too. The first look at the bunker's living area is done through a 180 degree shot from Michelle standing in the doorway to Howard standing across from her, and the film also gets across what an uncomfortable and cramped existence this is likely going to be for her with a wide shot of Howard and Michelle on opposite sides of his small room when

she has to use its restroom, and an overhead shot of her when she prepares to do her business. A further feeling of oppressiveness, both from the bunker and Howard, is felt in the many shots of the characters leaning up against the wall and the way Howard corners Michelle and leans in on her when he becomes angry at dinner. And if you really want to talk claustrophobic, the shots of Michelle having to crawl through the ventilation system, both to reach the air filtration controls and when she's attempting to escape at the end, are absolutely dripping with that.

We also get a sense of how the outside world is so near and yet so far in the scenes taking place within the makeshift airlock before the main door, which is always locked, with only a small slat allowing a glimpse out there, and when Michelle first finds the padlocked skylight after getting the air filtration system up and running again. At the same time, when the poisoned woman, Leslie, tries to get in early on and bangs her head against the glass when Michelle doesn't open the door, it also hammers home just   

how the bunker may truly be the only thing protecting them from certain death. Finally, Emmett's murder is done in a very quick and suggestive manner, with a close-up of him as Howard lifts the gun from offscreen, followed by a quick cut to Howard as he pulls the trigger, with Michelle nearly collapsing in a corner at this, as Howard tries to comfort her. During this moment, the sound initially goes out, then gradually comes back in, and while I'm normally not fond of this trope, I think it works very well here, and as Howard sends her out of the room, we see some blood on the wall in the left-hand corner.

It goes without saying that the role of production design in this film was especially crucial, and fortunately, they were able to create a set that accomplished everything the story required. In fact, from what I gleaned from interviews with Trachtenberg, the set for the bunker was built just as it looks in the movie, with all of the rooms actually connecting to each other in that very way, which also allowed them to shoot in chronological order. The first part of the bunker we see, Michelle's room, is the most oppressive one, with a floor and walls made

of concrete, an imposing door akin to that of a bank vault, and a drab color scheme that's clearly the result of it not being finished, as one half is painted an ugly salmon and the other a dreary green. Though Michelle does manage to add some more welcoming touches, such as a small table with a lamp, it's still far from ideal, and all she has to sleep on is a mattress up against the wall and a blanket. Right outside is a small corridor that acts as a storeroom, with shelves filled with all sorts of goods, as well as a garbage chute in the wall in the very back; it's also where Emmett is

forced to sleep. The most comfortable part is the "common area," which Howard has made into a full-on subterranean home for himself. The living room is full of typical household furniture and all sorts of personal items, like pictures on the wall, a pair of couches, an entertainment area with a television, plenty of movies on VHS and DVD, lots of books, a jukebox, and even shag carpeting and a small fish tank up in a corner (I aspire to one day have a basement like this). Connected to that is a fully

functional kitchen with a stove, refrigerator, sink, and silverware, with a dining table just in front of that. On one side of the living room is a door to Howard's personal space, which consists of little more than a bed, a rack of clothes, and the only working toilet and shower in the bunker, which are all crammed into a small space, along with a sink, and separated from everything else by a shower curtain with a cute image of a duck wearing a raincoat and holding an umbrella. Another door across from the kitchen area is a small 

room where tools are kept, and up in the back of said area is a door that leads upstairs to the bunker's "airlock" and outer door. The whole place has an air filtration system housed in a room up above them and which can normally be reached by a hatch in the storage corridor's ceiling. But when something blocks the hatch, Michelle is forced to reach it by crawling the ventilation system, and in addition to a bunch of junk and other miscellaneous times, she also finds a ladder leading up to a padlocked skylight.

While we're only outside for maybe 15% of the running time, the filmmakers did actually shoot in and around New Orleans, and we do get some nice shots of the city's skyline and the nearby countryside during the opening. However, because of the movie's structure, we don't get an establishing shot of Howard's farm and property until less than twenty minutes before the it's over, when Michelle manages to escape. My mixed feelings about the ending aside, this setting proves to be just as picturesque as what we saw at the beginning, as the property is

surrounded by wheat-fields and consists of a large farmhouse, the entrance to the bunker, and a shed. It's made even lovelier by the dimming light of the scene, with the sun setting in the horizon and it going from twilight to total darkness as the sequence goes on.

Getting back to the bunker, I actually find it to be kind of a shame that things ended up going sideways and that Howard is revealed to be a complete psychopath because, for a while, the three of them settle into a comfortable routine. You see them taking turns solving a jigsaw puzzle (only to discover when it's nearly completed that there are some pieces missing); Michelle and Howard working to make the former's room more comfortable; the three of them having dinner at the table, with Michelle having to help Emmett cut into the meat on his plate because of

his bad arm; Michelle and Emmett watching movies late at night (they watch something called Cannibal Airlines, the VHS box of which was, according to Trachtenberg, one of many fakes ones at the Bad Robot offices); the three of them playing board games, which takes on a more sinister connotation later; Michelle and Howard making sandwiches; Howard throwing some trash down the dump chute; and Michelle doodling some post-apocalyptic weapons and clothing onto some magazine photos. It 

gives off the vibe that they could've easily rode out whatever was happening up on the surface, as they had more than enough food and water, as well as entertainment to keep them occupied. But, again, once Michelle and Emmett learn the truth about Howard, everything we just saw them doing takes on more sinister and dark connotations, with Howard watching a movie he claims was "Megan's" favorite, Michelle using her clothes designing skills to create a makeshift hazmat suit, and her and Emmett fishing Howard's discarded shower curtain out of the trash chute to make it.

Going back to the notion of how this film is connected to Cloverfield, Trachtenberg explained it better than J.J. Abrams. In an interview with Empire in January of 2016, he stated, "Cloverfield was a familiar genre that was told in a very unique way. Similarly, we are a familiar genre that’s also told in a unique way. It’s not the same way: the first Cloverfield had that awesome hook of being told in this found-footage experience. We have something else going for us that makes it unique." I think I get what he means. While the first film was a kaiju movie

done in the "found footage" style, this is an isolated, contained thriller, within a possible post-apocalyptic setting, that keeps you guessing as to what the actual threat is and if there's even anything really happening on the surface. From what I've read elsewhere, the only true ties to Cloverfield were in the movie's viral marketing, with Howard having been an employee of the month at the company behind a satellite that's said to have awakened the monster by crashing into the ocean (according to expanded material, the satellite is

what can be seen hitting the water at the very end of the first movie, rather than the monster's egg, as some had theorized), and an envelope from said company showing up in the room that houses the ventilation system. But that's all, aside from the mailbox at the end revealing that the title is Howard's address, as the events of that first movie are never mentioned, and while the ending may justify the connection by its nature, it doesn't involve that monster or its parasites.

Being a PG-13 movie, you're obviously not going to see a lot of really gruesome makeup effects, but some of the stuff you do see here is shockingly gnarly. To prove to her that he knows what he's talking about, Howard takes Michelle up to the bunker's outer door, where she looks out and sees the bodies of Frank and Mildred, his two pigs, which look like they're half-dissolved and decayed. Later, when the woman named Leslie shows up at the bunker, she has ugly, red lesions on her face, and when Michelle won't let her in, she slams her face repeatedly against the small

window, leaving a splat of blood on it; during the climax, Michelle finds her body in the property's shed. One of the grisliest instances of makeup is the deep gash Howard has in his forehead after Michelle smashes a bottle in his face, which you see in close up when she has to stitch it later. And while Howard shooting Emmett happens just offscreen, when Michelle is escaping, you see a quick but horrific shot of his remains dissolving in the perchloric acid. When it comes to visual effects, it's really shocking how, in

stark contrast to Cloverfield, 10 Cloverfield Lane uses them very sparsely, and really only during the third act. After Howard falls face-first into the acid, you later see him as it's dissolving the side of his face, a subtle but still effective image that could be a combination of makeup and digital effects (you see some more makeup when the damage is shown in quick, close-up shots a few seconds later). But where they really come out is during the climax, and even then, they're used very subtly and effectively, not allowing us to get a really good look at them and, thus, keeping them from seeming overly fake.

The film basically has a double-climax, with the first coming after Howard has killed Emmett and Michelle decides to finish her hazmat suit and escape. Just as she puts the finishing touches on it, she hears Howard coming and hides the suit itself under her mattress, while putting the "mask" in the ventilation duct up near the ceiling. He comes in, tells her that it's time to set the table for dinner, and then turns to leave, when a screw from the vent comes loose and falls on the floor. Hearing the sound, as slight as it is, he turns  

and looks up at the vent, opening it and feeling around inside. He just misses touching the mask, then closes the vent and asks Michelle why the vent is loose, when he looks and sees a bit of the suit poking out from beneath her mattress. Immediately suspicious, he tells her to get up, grabbing her by the hair and tossing her aside when she hesitates. Flinging back the mattress and finding the suit, he lunges at Michelle, who runs out of the room, then closes and locks the door, and knocks some barrels in

front of it as a small blockade. Looking around, and finding Emmett's dissolving remains, she runs into Howard's bedroom, grabbing some tools. He appears in the doorway, asking if this is how she thanks him for saving her life, and she says, "No. This is," before dumping over the drum of perchloric acid. Howard slips and falls right into the corrosive liquid, while Michelle manages to jump across it and over him, back into the living room. She runs back to her room to grab the suit, as the acid spreads across the living room floor, dissolving a lamp's electrical cord and

electrical cord and sparking a fire. When she runs back out, she's faced with Howard, who's wheezing as the side of his face is dissolved by the acid. She turns over several shelves of goods when he lunges at her, then climbs over him and runs back into the living room, which is now engulfed in flames. Unable to reach the main door, Michelle, after tying the suit to her leg, removes the covering from a vent up near the ceiling and crawls through it, heading towards the room where the air filtration unit is housed. At one point, she stops and looks through a grating, into the

storeroom below, to see that Howard is gone. He then starts stabbing up into the vents with a knife, yelling at her, then removes another grill from the duct. He grabs her foot, saying she doesn't know what's outside and begs her to stay, but she kicks him off and continues on, reaching the room housing the unit. There, she unfolds and puts on her suit and mask, then climbs up the ladder leading to the skylight. She uses one of the tools she took, Howard's spray-can of liquid nitrogen, to weaken the padlock enough to where she can, eventually, knock it loose. With that, she opens the hatch and escapes the bunker.

Things immediately become calm, as she wanders across the property, seemingly relishing finally being outside, then heads to Howard's truck. It turns out to be unlocked, but as she's climbing in, she rips a tear in her pants' leg. Frantically, she grabs some duct tape and wraps it around the tear, then sits on the ground, trying to compose herself... when she hears and then sees a flock of birds flying across the sky up above. On a hunch, she removes her mask, and finds that the air is clean. Chuckling to herself, she hears the sound

of an aircraft nearby and climbs up atop Howard's truck, scanning the horizon. She sees what looks like a helicopter hovering off in the distance, then gets down and takes cover behind the truck, as the bunker's filtration system explodes down below, with the fire erupting up onto the surface. After it dies, she climbs up onto the truck and, as the nearby aircraft gets closer, both she and the audience realize it isn't what initially appeared to be.

Michelle's comment, "Come on!", probably reflects how most people feel when they first see this, as this is one of those instances where it's like you sat on the remote and changed it to a completely different movie. The "aircraft" turns out to be some kind of bio-mechanical, tentacled alien ship that's patrolling the area, coming closer when it senses the exploding bunker. Finding no keys in Howard's truck, Michelle runs to Leslie's nearby parked car, only to set off the alarm when she tries to get in while it's locked.

Fearing it'll attract the ship, she runs into a wooden shed nearby and locks herself in, finding Leslie's decaying body inside. As she watches through some slats in the wooden door, she sees some rustling around the edge of the wheat-field behind the car. Some sort of creature then emerges directly behind it and lifts it up a bit, seemingly out of curiosity. Even though it next peeks around the back of the car, sticks its head (or what I think is its head) into the shed through a small panel, and attacks Michelle when she 

tries to escape, we never get a good look at this thing, and can only make out that it's a quadruped and that what appears to be its mouth emerges when the flesh around it pulls back. Michelle, after finding the car keys on Leslie's body, turns off the alarm, prompting the creature to retreat back outside, and she then slips out and makes a break for the nearby farmhouse. The creature spots and chases after her, but just as she reaches the house, an enormous mothership rises up behind it and spreads a green gas across the field as it hovers towards her. She runs back to Howard's truck,

grabs her discarded mask and puts it back on, and when the gas envelops her, she sees that it works. But the creature shows up again and she quickly jumps into the truck, only for it to stick its head in through the top of the door as she tries to close it. It deploys its mouth, which is full of serrated teeth, and uses them to hook onto and rip off her mask. It pulls back out and Michelle is able to close the door, only for the mothership's tentacles to then reach down, grab the truck, and begin hoisting it up to a mouth-like orifice on its side that's constantly opening and closing. Just

when it seems as though Michelle is doomed, she finds a lighter in the seat, as well as a full bottle of booze, and creates a Molotov cocktail by ripping out some paper, stuffing it into the bottle's opening, and, after rolling down the window, lighting the paper on fire. As the ship pulls her closer to the mouth, she leans out the window, waiting for it to open again, and when it does, tosses it inside. It explodes within the ship and it drops the truck, along with Michelle, back to the ground.

After awakening to see the ship crash into the wheat-field, Michelle gets out of the truck, runs back to Leslie's car, gets in, and starts it up. She peels off of Howard's property, knocking over the mailbox that reveals the address as 10 Cloverfield Lane, and heads down the road. Turning on the radio, she learns that this is indeed a large-scale invasion, but the military is successfully beating the aliens back. The announcer advises civilians to head north of Baton Rouge, but adds that anybody with medical or combat training is needed in Houston. With that, Michelle brings her character arc full-circle by heading to Houston and straight into the battle-zone, with flashes of lightning illuminating a spacecraft even bigger than the one she just faced off in the distance.

On the one hand, I do like the concept of these invaders and the fact that we know nothing about them, other than they're apparently bio-mechanical in nature, which makes them all the more intriguing. The sequence itself is also quite exciting, with Michelle getting to show off more of her ingenuity and survival skills, and while it doesn't feature the monster from Cloverfield or its parasites, this final scene is the one reason I feel justifies this movie being tied to that one, as it is a similar idea: a gigantic

monstrous threat and some smaller offshoots, with that creature especially being something of a stand-in for the parasites. But, man, as much as I also like how it initially makes you think that Howard was full of it and then, within seconds, proves he was more than right, this is still a jarring 180 from what the movie had been up to this point. Granted, having them come out of the bunker and see whether or not there actually was some apocalyptic scenario happening on the surface was always going to be a tricky twist to

pull off, but I think a more effective way to do it would've been to go for the subtle approach. Instead of this big, final battle scene, they could've had it play out the way it was up to when Michelle realizes the air is clean and Howard seemingly didn't know what he was talking about. Then, she could've found a way to drive off the property, likely still in Leslie's car after searching around for the keys and finding them on her body in the shed, and as she goes, she hears reports about the alien attack on the radio and the ending could play out as it is. Or, they could've had

her drive off without turning on the radio at all, and lead into that final shot of the alien ship appearing in the distance. That could also end the movie on a nicely ambiguous note, as you may be wondering if it is a ship or just an odd cloud formation illuminated by the lightning.

The music score is the work of the always awesome Bear McCreary, who comes up with a simple but memorable and oft-repeated main theme, consisting of these five descending, uncomfortable, and dreary-sounding notes. Among other emotions, this theme nicely gets into Michelle's distressed state of mind during the opening, the terror she feels when she first awakens down in the bunker, and the hopelessness of her situation as it becomes more and more clear. It's also effectively re-orchestrated in a more action-oriented form for some of the suspenseful scenes later on, like when Michelle is escaping and battling the aliens, and becomes the backbone of a full-on orchestral overture that plays over the ending credits, one which starts out fast and bombastic, then becomes more subdued and creeping, and goes back to orchestral, before finally ending on a low, eerie note. It's definitely the piece of music you'll remember most, although McCreary does come up with some other nice ones for the quieter, more emotional and atmospheric moments, as well as for other, more tense ones. And there are also some memorable songs featured on the soundtrack, like I Think We're Alone Now for the montage of the characters settling into life in the bunker, and Tell Him, which Howard plays on the jukebox and dances to in that one uncomfortable scene.

10 Cloverfield Lane may not be a typical sequel at all, but that doesn't mean it's not a good movie; in fact, it's freaking awesome. It's simply a very well-made, tight mystery/suspense thriller, with excellent performances by all three of our leads, great direction that conveys a lot of the story and information visually, well-executed instances of tension and uneasiness, a claustrophobic setting that is taken advantage of in every way possible, and a really great and fitting music score. Aside from a climax that, while having its own merits, feels like you're suddenly watching a completely different movie, and could've been pulled off in a more effectively subtle manner, I have no issues with this film whatsoever and recommend it both to those who like a good thriller and even those who really liked the first Cloverfield, despite how completely different it is.