10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) (English Language)

Review

103min

Genre:     Sci-fi, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Director:  Dan Trachtenberg

Cast:       Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, John Gallagher Jr.

Writers:   Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken & Damien Chazelle

-Synopsis-

After being saved from a serious car accident, a young woman finds herself trapped in a secure bunker with her rescuer, unsure if her saviour is also her captor, will her instincts to escape expose her to an even more dangerous outside world?

We at FilmPhonic like to avoid extended film essays and plot spoilers in reviews like the plague, but be warned that this is one of those films that’s impossible to talk about without giving a little something away, even with our best efforts to keep it vague.

Much has been made about this movie’s relationship to 2008’s monster disaster flick ‘Cloverfield’, rest assured though that this is no sequel or even a spin-off.  In fact even as a “blood realtive”, as producer of both J.J. Abrams has described it, it’s a very distant one who’s familiar features are only felt in far away tones and in the tone-shifting finale, but more about that later.

For the most part ’10 Cloverfield Lane’ is a contained (pardon the pun), simple and specific psychological escape thriller that ratchets up the tension and suspense, and which stands well enough alone until the final 15 minutes.

Director Dan Trachtenberg’s mystery/thriller touches on themes of psychological abuse, split-personality disorder, the ever raging battle between freedom and security, but it only ever brushes across them and the simplistic narrative is never weighed down by much subtext.

This is a play-like three-hander starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead in a restrained but solid performance as the abused caged bird that struggles for freedom, alongside John Gallagher Jr. as her co-conspirator and the ever brilliant John Goodman as the split-personality saviour/captor in a sinister and complex role.

Indeed all the characters seem to have an element of dual personality, but not as much the film.

It’s pretty clear from all the coverage and reviews that there is a huge, if not surprising tonal and narrative shift at the end of the film. This is where the this standalone little thriller becomes part of a much larger, familiar and slightly disappointing bigger picture.

The finale is just not in keeping with the rest of the film, not just in tone and narrative, but in stylistic choices and execution as well. But it’s clearly necessary to make ’10 Cloverfield Lane’ work as what it’s likely meant to be; a clever and unique origin story that’s part of a much bigger universe.

The Bottom Line…

Despite a much maligned but necessary tonal shift in its finale, ’10 Cloverfield Lane’ is a solid if unspectacular little psychological thriller and tense escape drama that belies its probable function as a rather clever part of a far larger cinematic picture.

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Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Funny Games (2007)

Two young psychopaths take a middle-class family hostage, forcing them to participate in sadistic games for their own amusement in Michael Haneke’s remake of his own dark 1997 Austrian thriller.

Directed by Michael Haneke and starring Michael Pitt, Naomi Watts and Tim Roth among others.

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