REVIEW: 10 Cloverfield Lane delivers as a thriller shrouded in questions.
By Franklin Racobs, Staff Writer
10 Cloverfield Lane, directed by Dan Trachtenberg and starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, and John Gallagher Jr., tells the story of Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who is in a car accident and wakes up in a bunker with two men she does not know.
J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production company produced this film and were able to do what they do best: keep this film surrounded in as much mystery as possible. No one knew of this film until the first trailer was released just two months before the theatrical release of the film. When the trailer dropped, people were scratching their heads over what this film’s relation was to 2008’s Cloverfield. Was it a sequel, a prequel, or a spinoff? Many people were confused because the trailer did not reveal much in the way of the plot or characters. I entered the theater only knowing what the trailers had told me and that I was a huge fan of Cloverfield, and with this movie, the less you know going in, the better.
Dan Trachtenberg shows off his skills in his feature-film directorial debut. Trachtenberg does an excellent job of creating tension between these three characters with camera angles that exclude surroundings and make you worry for whomever the camera faces. The pacing of the film was very captivating. Trachtenberg keeps the audience guessing about what is really going on down in the bunker and what the truth is about the condition of the surface.
The two main characters are both well-written and acted. Mary Elizabeth Winstead portrays the character of Michelle perfectly. Michelle is a very likeable character who, unlike most characters in these kinds of films, is smart and able to think and act ahead of the audience. This makes the film completely unpredictable. John Goodman is one of the greatest character actors and gives both a creepy and thought-provoking performance as what most would call “the man in charge.” Goodman’s ability to get inside this complicated character keeps the audience guessing what the truth really is.
The original Cloverfield was a horror film that put a clever and new spin on the found-footage genre. With 10 Cloverfield Lane, we have a new installment in the franchise that delivers something quite different: a mysterious, suspenseful, claustrophobic thriller that could end up creating more questions for this gripping franchise than it answered.