Without spoilers, all I can say is that this movie was everything I hoped for. And then some. Surprising for a movie that was just revealed and announced not long ago, if only they could keep surprises like this more often...
It was captivating, it was thrilling. There were some great tension and atmosphere building, and even scares!
And the finale was as fun as I wished it to be.
So all in all, go watch it. It was a blast! With Deadpool and Hateful 8, that makes some terrific and great films to kick off the year.
Now if you wanna go into spoilers, and that's the only way to discuss a film like this, then read ahead, otherwise pass your path.
So how about 10 Cloverfield Lane?
What starts as a fairly great huis clos inside a bunker turned into a pretty thrilling science-fiction film at the end!
Dan Trachtenberg did a fantastic job on the direction of the film.
The film had some fantastic imagery, a great pacing, great picture, etc.
The first and principal part of the film is spent in this bunker, and it felt quite real, claustrophobic and creepy. Then our main protagonist started feeling comfy and things seemed ok.. for a while, but it all took a turn for the worse as the story progressed.
For some reason the whole first half of the film really reminded me of the show LOST, in a good way. In fact, they should have just thrown some Dharma logo on the food items for fun, just to mess with people.
Speaking of, Mary Elizabeth Winstead was fan-tastic in the film!
She's turning into quite the scream queen. She was great as always. I love this girl! And her character is perhaps one of the most badass protagonists I've seen in quite a while, always making smart decisions and turning into a real MacGyver when need to be.
And of course John Goodman just made the film for me, great choice. I always watching him and it feels like it's been a while since I last saw him in anything, really.
The Emmett-guy was fun, even if he had little to do in the film. Poor guy, you kinda felt for him after a while, John Goodman's character really was annoyed by his presence and it feels like he was able to get into this vault early in as Goodman just captured Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Michelle.
Finally, the last arc went really over-the-top and really fun.
I think the movie could have worked just fine with her getting out...and cutting to black. But that's a story we've all seen plenty of times, and this was in fact titled "Cloverfield", let's not forget that.
So then the movie completely switched tone and we left the claustrophobic huis clos-thriller... for an alien invasion scifi film!! Well, John Goodman warned them at the beginning!
That ending was pretty fun! And sort of reminded me of a mix of War of the Worlds (the original or the Spielberg one) and J. J. Abrams' own Super 8.
Those alien dogs (?) and the big creepy spaceship were fun, although we never get a proper decent shot at them.
I loved how this basically turned out to be MEW's character's worst week, ever. Running from a problem to an even bigger one.
This was well-worth the Cloverfield title in my eyes. In fact the film was filled with little nods and allusions to Clovie, even if it wasn't a direct continuation of it. There were a lot of parallels to that film.
Not even talking the little direct nods like Slusho! etc.
I honestly always say that - I prefer spiritual sequels that allow room for creativity than storylines-continuity. See my point with the Mad Max films, the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness series or the Cornetto Trilogy.
Both Cloverfield films do seem to show us a sort of alien invasion taking place and "normal regular people" trying to survive. One was a kaiju film from the perspective of a found footage-film. And this new one was more of an alien invasion from the point of view of someone escaping from a thriller story far from the actual action. In fact Abrams' own Super 8 can even be seen as part of this series, in a way. Just you wait until they rename it something like Cloverfield: Super 8...
I would love to see another Cloverfield either tie those two together, or simply a body snatcher/office space mashup. Just throwing ideas here!
(I do miss Clovie, though. Yes, the monster. Say what you will, that was a genuinely original film and fun monster design.)
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