10 Cloverfield Lane: A movie review by Toni Susskind
10 Cloverfield Lane is a taut psychological thriller which draws you in and demands your attention.
In the same genre as the successful Twilight zone franchise, you are never quite sure where reality ends and fiction begins.
Without giving too much away, the twist is unnecessary and does not do justice to a film, where the strong cast is led by the brilliant John Goodman. This is attested to by the fact, that although the film is predominately three people, at no time do you feel an emptiness on the screen.
After a late night car accident, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wakes to find that she is being held against her will in an underground shelter. Howard Stambler (John Goodman), her captor or savour depending on how you look at things, claims that the outside world has been destroyed by a widespread chemical and or nuclear attack, possibly an alien invasion. Which one, he is not sure of yet.
Joining the pair in the shelter is Emmett (John Gallagher Jr), a construction worker who at the first sign of violence in the sky, raced over to the bunker and demanded to be let in. Over the course of the movie, Michelle and Emmett become allies, but is he all that he seems?
Like the Twilight Zone, nothing here is clear-cut. Was there an attack and Howard has saved Michelle and Emmett’s lives, or is he an unhinged conspiracy theorist with a nefarious agenda?
Produced by JJ Abrams, who has also worked on Star Trek, Star Wars, Lost and the 2008 movie Cloverfield, Abrams has stated that 10 Cloverfield Lane is not a literal sequel, but rather a “blood relative” to Cloverfield.
