3 out of 5

Directed by: Dan Trachtenberg

Conceptually, 10 Cloverfield Lane is a great movie.  It plays with expectations and then plays with them again; it’s well shot and paced, stringing out its plot beats for just long enough to keep them effective, and focused down to a 3-actor cast, each character holds our attention and earns some empathy.  Which is certainly a necessity for locked-room type flicks.  And yet: there’s a sensation permeating every scene of the movie – that we’ve been here before.  The eventual outcome could be seen as a positive or negative response to that, but I still appreciated that the overall construction felt genuine from start to finish; despite some name changes due to being wrapped under the J. J. Abrams banner, the script comes across as it was assumedly intended from start to finish.

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is driving away from a breakup when she’s in a car accident.  She wakes up in the cellar of Howard (John Goodman), who tells her that she can’t go outside because something happened – a nuke, an attack – and it’s going to be a year or two of fallout.  Michelle is skeptical, but despite Howard’s conspiracy nuttiness, she comes to believe his side of things, encouraged by Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr.), who forced his way into the same cellar after seeing the events Howard describes.  The script thankfully doesn’t go for the obvious everyone-against-everyone setup, and director Trachtenberg chooses to fully realize the living space (which has been outfitted by Howard for just such an occurrence) instead of playing up the claustrophobia; again, the movie earns good will for not falling into the usual tropes.  But we know some shoes will drop at some point, and Michelle is all too eager to hunt for her own conspiracies in Howard’s past to urge that along.  The escalation is entertaining, it’s just that there’s nothing else to do with the initial premise, so we can only go along for the ride.

The discussion surrounding the Cloverfield tag – and the expectations it adds – is valid, so I do think it helps to go in understanding that the movie can exist on its own if it wants to.  With or without that link, it still falls prey to some snap reactions and plot-motivating coincidences, and unless you haven’t seen any movies before the reveals won’t be much of a surprise, but it’s still a joy to see such mature and patient execution of the genre, brought to life by a great John Goodman performance and a rich sense of framing and production.