The name 10 Cloverfield Lane was obviously intended to suggest something, but what? This film seems like a mashup of Cloverfield suggestions, with a strong hint of Room and The Witch. Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), is driving along an unremarkable rural road in Louisiana when she’s hit by another vehicle and rendered unconscious. She wakes up in a bed, with and IV dripping fluid into her body, but she’s not in a hospital. Instead, she’s in a windowless concrete block building, being attended by a very gnarly looking Howard (John Goodman). He does his best to assure her that he has rescued her, but the fact that she’s chained to the bed isn’t exactly reassuring. She tries to escape, but is overpowered by Howard. Howard tells her that some sort of attack is underway, that the air outside is poisoned and makes allusions to a previous female resident. Michelle realizes that Howard has her in a home-made underground bunker, elaborately supplied with food, water, alcohol and air purification sufficient to last for several years. She doesn’t know whether to believe Howard, but strange, ominous, rumbling noises coming from above make her unsure.
Soon after, she meets Emmett (John Gallagher Jr), a local guy who is also in the bunker. He informs her that he’d convinced Howard to take him in. Between the two of them, however, doubts emerge while Howard tries to create the trappings of “normal” life inside the bunker, in spite of being their captor. What is Howard up to? Why can’t they leave or at least take a peek out of the bunker to see what’s happening? Should they come up with an escape plan? Howard confesses to being a strange, reclusive survivalist. In spite of how twisted Howard might be, the sounds from outside suggest that something is going on out there and it’s not good.
If you have been around long enough, or know some recent history, you might recall that in the dark days of the Cold War, there were lots of people who bought and sold bomb and fallout shelters, either facilities in their basement or even as a complete underground bunker, not unlike Howard’s. That sort of paranoia was not even considered to be paranoid at that moment, just zealous caution. In this case, the Cloverfield name of the movie suggests not Soviet attack, but something extraterrestrial. Is this true or did the movie’s producers, which include J J Abrams, just use the name as part of a franchise, a small movie in place of the big FX spectacle that Cloverfield was, or a Room II? I’m not telling.
This film was quite well crafted and very tense. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who has mainly done shorts and TV episodes, this movie really works. Suspense builds by the moment and what’s actually going on isn’t directly revealed until late in the film so you just don’t know what is next. The claustrophobic bunker provides most of the movie’s sets, so the cost of the film must have been low. Nevertheless, like Room and The Witch, the minimal sets require the style of the movie to scare you with things you never see, often a much better way to be scary. As you might expect in such a small world, cinematography is close up and personal. Aside from a few other minimal appearances, the cast consists of only Goodman, Winstead and Gallagher. The three of them are excellent at conveying the menace of this awful setting.
I don’t know just what the germination of this film was and why the Cloverfield reference was invoked. Unless there is some larger franchise, trilogy or series in Abrams mind, it’s not at all clear what the connection is. It’s certainly possible that Abrams just wanted to use the name to give the film a boost in name recognition. On the other hand, the style of the movie is either a follow up or a new trend, based on two previous hits, Room and The Witch, for which low budget minimalism succeeds in being much more scary than giant digital monsters or yet another digging up of overproduced vampires or shape shifters. As in Room and The Witch, I was on the edge of my seat, an accomplishment for a guy who has seen an overdose of horror movies in his life. I don’t think it was quite as good as either of those, but it’s a worthy addition to this genre, which seems to be a trend looking for a name.
