Review of 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) by Pav K — 02 Jun 2016

When I first heard about 10 Cloverfield Lane about a month ago, my first thought was "Wow! This Cloverfield sequel came out of NOWHERE!" then when I heard the cast and premise my thought was "Wait, isn't this just The Cellar?" turns out, yes it is just The Cellar. And if you haven't heard of The Cellar before, I don't mean that 10 Cloverfield is a ripoff of some other movie called The Cellar, I mean it is literally The Cellar, like it's the same movie. It was announced a couple of years ago with this exact cast and premise, but it was called The Cellar.

And it should have stayed being called The Cellar.

The decision to change the title was clearly made because Bad Robot was worried it wouldn't make as many ticket sales as an original movie, so they tied it in to a pre-existing franchise to cop that brand recognition. I won't spoil what 10 Cloverfield is actually about, but I will tell you what it's definitely not about: Anything even remotely Cloverfield related. I know JJ Abrams said that it was more of a "blood relative" than a direct sequel. But it's not even that. It's a complete separate world with a single shoehorned in reference to the original film. And I didn't even like Cloverfield! It actually almost convinced me not to watch this film.

I'm glad I did though, because not only is it pretty decent as a whole, it also features what is honestly probably the best John Goodman performance I've seen since Barton Fink, 25 years ago. That guy is an absolute force. Skin crawlingly intense & creepy.

I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, although to be fair I don't know how it could have been done better. I liked 10 Cloverfield Lane, it's got a great indie-feel for about 90% of it, and I can see myself recommending it. But forget Cloverfield, this is a totally unrelated movie, your best bet is to push it out of your mind completely, so not only are you prepared for the fact that it is not a sequel in any way, shape or form, you won't even be looking out for other connections or making assumptions about the resolution of the mystery, and that is the best way you can watch it.

64%.

-Gimly.