9.5/10. So much of movies these days is about “the reveal,” that one detail, unveiled at the end of the picture, meant to recontextualize everything you’ve seen. *10 Cloverfield* has a hell of a reveal, several in fact, but that’s not what makes it great. In fact, it basically toys around, in almost metatextual fashion, with the function a reveal or a twist plays in these sorts of stories.
Because director Dan Trachtenberg and writers Josh Campbell, Matthew Stucken and Damien Chazelle play with the audience’s expectations throughout the film. When we first see Michelle trapped in a small room and told the world has ended outside and the world is ended, the tropes of the genre make us believe that’s a lie, that it’s an excuse to keep her imprisoned. Then, when she nearly escapes and sees (granted, a bit conveniently) someone who fits the description of someone afflicted by the poisoned air, she realizes it’s the truth. The same thing happens when Michelle finally escapes, driven to run by Howard’s controlling nature, and she sees the empty skies and takes off her makeshift hazmat helmet. We’re led to believe that maybe it was all a game, a trick or something temporary that had been kept from here. Then, well, the UFO shows up.
That’s the most wonderful “twist” to *10 Cloverfield Lane*. The film is constantly creating little mysteries, the biggest of them being the one that propels the film: has the world truly ended or is Howard just insane and trying to keep Michelle here? The rub is that it’s not an either/or question; it’s both. The film answers it’s central question revealing that yes, Howard is a mentally unhinged prepper who is a mortal threat to the people in his care who’s desperately trying to project the daughter who was taken away from him, but he’s also completely correct that aliens have arrived and are unleashing seismic blasts and toxic gas on the human population.
But even apart from that clever direction for the movie’s plot, *10 Cloverfield Lane* is a tightly-written, incredibly shot, wonderfully acted film that develops its characters and maintains a mood of supreme tenseness and intrigue throughout. The writing really elevates the film. From little details like Howard freezing his vodka being a subtle setup for Michelle breaking the lock on the escape hatch, to Howard trying to guess the title “Little Women” during a parlor game revealing how he sees Michelle as a substitute and fill-in for his lost daughter, the script parcels out little hints and tidbits and threads that it ties together by the end of the film. It’s a clockwork picture, with no superfluous detail or element of the film that does not come back in a meaningful fashion later on.
And yet, all of the details revolve around one truly incredible performance from John Goodman. As one of Hollywood’s most outstanding and versatile actors, it’s easy to grow accustomed to Goodman’s consistent greatness in movies of all stripes. Nevertheless, he is particularly electric here, communicating so much about Howard’s persnickety and particular qualities, about his military precision and organization, about the hints at his mental instability that tow the line between a simply peculiar man and a dangerous one, about the genteel nature of Howard that barely conceals a frightening fury and power behind it. He veers between the incredibly subtle and funny moments of the film and the ones where Howard is pure menace with an effortlessness that stands out even in a character who is so meticulous.
Of course, much of the film also rests on the shoulders of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who portrays Michelle, the film’s antagonist. She too delivers a superb performance, one that’s lighter on dialogue given the tense and terse confines of the film’s trapped-in-a-bunker setting, but one full of meaning, where each utterance, each look, is layered with multiple meanings.
Michelle is also a well-written character who defies the tropes of the genre. In so many films where people are captured or trapped or put in these sorts of confined situations, the prisoners feels like helpless pawns of the mastermind, missing obvious opportunities to get out or fight back in favor of plot convenient dramatics. Here, however, Michelle is resourceful, skeptical, and sharp from her very first scene in confinement. She understands the situation; she’s intuitive and questioning about what’s going on, and she finds clever and creative ways to solve the problems the film presents. That’s quite refreshing, not just for the depiction of a young woman on film, but for the protagonist in a horror or thriller film.
Like it’s prequel (or cousin, depending on the vague connections), *10 Cloverfield Lane* focuses on the human element within the extraordinary events taking place. Yes, there are dramatic escapes and physical altercations, but some of the film’s most compelling moments are quiet scenes where the characters reveal little bits of themselves to one another. We learn as much about Howard from his laconic comments about his daughter or his brief remembrances of his old life as we do from his accepting an apology followed by shooting Emmett in cold blood. A quiet conversation between Michelle and Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr., in a smaller but important role) adds pathos and theme to both characters, conveying the irony that someone too afraid to leave now finds himself physically unable to do so, and someone too afraid to intervene in parental abuse now finds herself being abused by a surrogate parent.
That idea provides the thematic depth of *10 Cloverfield Lane*. Like *Vertigo*, there is something incredibly unnerving about someone trying to recreate a relationship they lost, forcing strangers into playing parts from a past they cannot let go of. But that theme is given greater weight when it comes from a man who is clearly ensconced in perilous ideas about control and protection and being prepared for the worst, who inflicts his own damage on the world after losing his daughter. There is a subtext to the film that not only makes it something deeper than a series of thrills, but which adds to the unnerving qualities of the space Howard has created and the people he has impressed into populating it.
In truth, the film loses a little of that luster when it dispenses with the claustrophobic tenseness of the bunker setting (replete with superbly framed shots and a score that heightens the intensity of each scene) and closes with a stalk-and-battle sequence between Michelle and the extraterrestrial invaders. But that too can coast of the shock of the fact that *10 Cloverfield Lane* is having its cake and eating it too, mashing up the fibbing jailer and the sole survivor narratives into something that would make Rod Serling proud. This film is an example of the greatness that emerges when you take the tropes of a genre, stand them on their head, and find the natural anxieties and lived-in characters at the core of these stories.
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