You may remember
Cloverfield, which was a sort of
Blair Witch Project crossed with
War of the Worlds and set in New York City. That movie and the new
10 Cloverfield Lane were both produced by JJ Abrams, also known for directing a few small films like the new
Star Trek and
Star Wars: Episode VII. The coincidence of the names is not a coincidence, although it is not clear whether the two films are supposed to exist in the same multiverse. It is hard to write a spoiler-free review of
10 Cloverfield Lane. But I will describe the first 15 minutes, which is basically everything in the trailer. Unusually, this movie is not only shot in Louisiana, but it is set in Louisiana. In the first scene, a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is looking out of her apartment in New Orleans at the Mississippi River bridge and the Algiers Ferry. She has just broken up with her boyfriend (voiced by Bradley Cooper. This will be good for Pub trivia) and is driving west on I-10 when she is kidnapped by a somewhat crazed guy (John Goodman) who lives near Lake Charles. Ok maybe that is redundant. Anyway, she wakes up in a locked room in a bunker and the guy tells her that he has saved her, since something bad has happened outside, nuclear war, chemical attack, Mars attack, he makes several suggestions. So, maybe since this movie has Cloverfield in the title, this is
Room crossed with
War of the Worlds. Well, you are just going to have to go and see for yourself. The only other thing I will say, is that there is a third person in the bunker, a young man (John Gallagher Jr.) who helped to build it. Obviously, from inside the bunker it is not apparent what if anything is happening outside. You can assume that Winstead tries to escape, and you can assume that by the end of the movie, someone makes it out and sees what if anything is happening in the outside world. But you will just have to assume. The very small cast is great. I like all three actors. John Goodman is always fantastic but is usually seen in a supporting role. So, it's nice to see him in a leading role. I also like Winstead who has been in a few movies and is slowly becoming a star. I loved her in
Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Gallagher is perhaps best known for taking the
Sex and the City Bus tour to impress his girlfriend in
The Newsroom. Anyway, 10 Cloverfield Lane is 91% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes so people are liking it. It is good, although I certainly felt like it wasn't breaking any new ground in the "guy kidnaps beautiful young woman and keeps her in a bunker to save her from aliens" genre. And all through the movie, I just wanted to find out what was going on outside. I had a few theories including, nothing was going on. But, I really can't say. Like I said, you'll have to go see it.
10 Cloverfield Lane is breaking a lot of new ground in horror as it blends subgenres. Michelle seemed as if she was in Misery only to walk out of that bunker into the zombie apocalypse, without the zombies. Too, it is not a sequel to Cloverfield, but instead, has what its makers call a "spiritual connection" to the original, which makes for better franchise material than just replaying the plot again with different characters. Instead, as in Romero's Night of the Living Dead films, or the spin-offs of AMC's The Walking Dead, or NBC's Hannibal, the characters all live in the same fictional universe that exists outside of our time.
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