Movie Review: “10 Cloverfield Lane” suggests that monsters come in many forms

MOVIE REVIEW: “10 CLOVERFIELD LANE” (PG-13)

Leave it to master of the mystery box, J.J. Abrams, to produce a film under the radar and spring it on savvy movie audiences without them even knowing it was coming. Add to this the possibility that this film could actually be the “Cloverfield” sequel that Abrams and crew had been talking about putting together for years and you have all the makings of an intriguing motion picture experiment.

There’s been plenty of chatter that the initial script for “10 Cloverfield Lane,” which went under the name “The Cellar,”  had nothing at all to do with “Cloverfield” and that a connection was ultimately made by way of script rewrites (one of the screenwriters here is Damien Chazelle of “Whiplash” fame) to make the film an easier sell. Whatever the case may be, Abrams has suggested in the months since the announcement of this film’s release,  that “10 Cloverfield Lane” isn’t so much a sequel to “Cloverfield” as it is a blood relative. Take that as you will.

As “10 Cloverfield Lane” opens, an emotionally distraught woman named Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is at a crossroads in her life. After what appears to be heavy contemplation, she decides it’s time to move on from her current relationship. While embarking on a lengthy road trip in an effort to make what she hopes will be a fresh start, a horrific car accident renders Michelle unconscious. When she comes to, she fines herself trapped in an underground bunker with two strangers: Lumbering and mysterious Howard (John Goodman) and beguiling jokester Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.).

Throughout the film, these three characters come to know one another, and we the audience come to know them as individuals.  It isn’t long though, before tension begins to escalate and shortly thereafter, it becomes completely apparent that either there’s truth behind Howard’s proclamation that the world outside the walls of the bunker is dead as result of some kind of epic attack, or… Howard has a screw loose.

First time feature director Dan Trachtenberg makes an impressive debut mixing a Hitchcockian sense of suspense with an off kilter Shyamalan-inspired sense of mystery, and for the majority of it’s running time, “10 Cloverfield Lane” unfolds more like a play than an Abrams-produced spectacle. There are lots of close-ups, so we can see the pain and weathered nature of these characters right there on their faces.

There are some pacing issues in the first half of the picture that suggest perhaps this material would have been more effective had it been a short film, and there are a couple of character moments that feel awkward and not behaviorally in sync with the way you’d think rational human beings might act in this sort of situation, but then I freely admit I’ve never been in such a situation so perhaps I’m off base with that assumption. One thing is certain, though: The cast is solid, and Trachtenberg gets a lot of mileage off them.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead displays real chops here by way of both her emotional complexity and physicality. Michelle is a woman who often runs away from her problems but now, she has no choice but to face her current problem head on, and Winstead sells it every step of the way. Even in the film’s goofier moments, like when Michelle does the kinds of ridiculously creative things that would even impress the likes of MacGyver, Winstead somehow manages to keep this character grounded in reality. It takes a special kind of actress to grab hold of a viewer even when they don’t utter a single line of dialogue for the first ten minutes of a movie, and Winstead is one of those actresses.

John Goodman is equally effective. His Howard is a time bomb waiting to go off. In any given moment, he can go from sweet and caring to abrasive and terrifying. It’s a testament to Goodman’s ability as a performer that for a great deal of this movie’s running time, we aren’t entirely sure if this man is a genius, a sociopath, a survivalist, a simpleton, or all of the above.

Rounding out the cast is the lesser known but no less important Gallagher Jr. Truth be told, his Emmett is the least compelling character at a surface level, and even though this individual’s  sense of humor tends to feel weird and out of place, Emmett serves a distinct purpose in the movie, and an affable Gallagher makes you care about a character that, in the end, truly is worth caring about.

After “10 Cloverfield Lane” ended, I couldn’t help but feel that despite what worked in the picture, there was something off.  Something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. After sleeping on it, it occurred to me that that “something” was quite simply the title of the movie. On the one hand, the title blatantly uses the “Cloverfield” name to fool fans into thinking this film is something that it’s not. On the other hand, there is, to a certain extent, connective tissue here, particularly of a thematic nature.

In other words,  “10 Cloverfield Lane” sort of subverts our idea of what a sequel can or can’t be (Birthmoviesdeath.com’s Andrew Todd made the creative observation that calling “10 Cloverfield Lane” a sequel to “Cloverfield” would sort of be like calling  “Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter” a sequel to “Fargo”) and while the very idea of that is refreshing, there are times when this picture does itself a disservice by way of its title because it feels like a bit of a misrepresentation.  From the get go, “Cloverfield” fans might be asking themselves when the monster from Matt Reeves’ 2008 alien invasion hit might show up. This very notion distracts a bit from what is an otherwise tightly wound three character play about two men and a woman trying to figure each other out while barricaded in an underground shelter.

Still, that somewhat pesky disservice isn’t enough to diminish the overall effectiveness of this intimate, entertaining, and sometimes unnerving fusion of “Room,” “War of the Worlds,” and “The Twilight Zone.”  “10 Cloverfield Lane” may not be as strong as its numerous influences, but it greatly benefits  from three solid lead performances, an engrossing chamber mystery build (elevated by an exceptional Bear McCreary score), and a final act in which a primary character’s new outlook on life feels entirely earned.

Furthermore, it should be noted that this movie doesn’t cheat the audience by way of a cop-out ending. There is a definitive answer as to whether Howard is crazy or not. Some might argue that the finale here feels a little tacked on, but few viewers will accuse “10 Cloverfield Lane” of taking the easy way out, and that’s another attribute that makes this “Cloverfield”  “blood relative” worth seeing  in a theater.