It does the horror genre proud.
10 Cloverfield Lane
Grade:A-
Director: Dan Tractenberg (Portal: No Escape)
Screenplay: Josh Campbell et al.
Cast: John Goodman (Trumbo), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim)
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hr 43 min.
by John DeSando
“Don’t leave me! You don’t know what’s out there.” Howard (John Goodman)
Everything is out there in this entertaining horror flick called 10 Cloverfield Lane. It has the usual tropes but manages to be surprising at every turn and satisfying at character development. In other words, for a date you couldn’t do better with something to please geeks and non geeks alike.
Twenty-something Michelle is abducted by Howard, imprisoning her in his survival bunker for not-so-clear motives. He’s a fat middle-aged former military guy, and she’s an attractive wife who just left her husband. So there’s a bit of Room here, what with her confinement and a bland young man as well, Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr.). It doesn’t appear to be a sexual kidnapping, for Howard talks about saving her after an accident and the two of them from an alien invasion.
You can see my fascination about his scary but complex story because Howard may be lying about the invasion and the polluted atmosphere, or he could be substituting Michelle for his dead daughter. It’s enjoyable to try to understand Howard’s motives, and it’s viscerally a treat to see Michelle empowered like a feminine super hero in her attempts to escape. While Cloverfield Lane is no feminist tract, it has touches of social awareness as it emphasizes her wit, the slower wit of Emmett, and the sharpness of seemingly sluggish Howard.
Director Dan Tractenberg and producer J. J. Abrams barely miss a chance to play the jump-scare staple, be it a hand coming up an air duct or a zombie-like woman outside the bunker’s window. While devotees of the genre will be delighted by the inclusion of many formulaic elements, the regular audience should just have fun at the scary episodes leading to a somewhat surprising final segment. Or they may simply enjoy watching one of filmdom’s best actors, John Goodman. A good man he is, but whether or not the character he portrays is, well, that's up to you. You’ll have fun figuring it out.
“No! No! No, No! No! Don't open that door! You're going to get all of us killed!” Howard
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
