Time: 104 Minutes
Age Rating: M – Violence & content that may disturb
Cast:
Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Michelle
John Goodman as Howard Stambler
John Gallagher Jr. as Emmett DeWitt
Director: Dan Trachtenberg

10 Cloverfield Lane has been getting a lot of attention ever since it’s release, and I’ve been meaning to see it for a long time. Having seen it very recently, I can tell you, it deserves all the hype and didn’t disappoint. The film was very suspenseful, features great performances from Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman and was overall a very effective thriller.

I think I should state something first, I haven’t seen the original Cloverfield but from what I have heard from some people, 10 Cloverfield Lane doesn’t tie directly into it. So I should mention, don’t go into this movie expecting Cloverfield 2 or hold off seeing it because you haven’t seen the original, go into it as it’s own separate movie. Now, into the movie itself. This movie does flow slowly, and it’s a very contained suspenseful movie from start to finish. Throughout the majority of the film we don’t know what happened, whether they have been captured, rescued or what, and that was handed excellently. The third act in particular is very tense, I didn’t know how this film would end. I should mention that in the last act, there is a reveal/twist which will divide people. I personally liked it, but I felt like it was a little rushed, there wasn’t much of a transition, and I honestly kinda wished that they didn’t go in a certain direction with the plot. But it still worked.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is great in this movie, this is probably the best performance I’ve seen from her so far. It’s very easy to like her as her character is very smart and capable, not making any dumb decisions that a lot of thriller protagonists would do. She’s actually thinking ahead of the audience. However the actor who really steals the show in this movie is John Goodman, he is so excellent in this movie, he was really unpredictable and kind of scary. It’s hard to pin down what he would do and when, and he is such an intimidating presence. He gave one of his all time best performances here, and that’s saying a lot. John Gallagher Jr. was the third major character in the film. Unfortunately for him, there’s not as much attention on his character but he was good with what he was given.

The director of this movie is Dan Trachtenberg and this is his first ‘big’ movie, and he has done such a great job with this movie, he has a promising career ahead of him, the direction of this movie was really great. This film is very tense and a lot of that is due to the direction. The cinematography was great, the soundtrack also was great, it really added to the tension.

I really liked 10 Cloverfield Lane, I didn’t know what to expect and I was quite satisfied with what I got. Now as I said earlier, I heard that this movie doesn’t tie into Cloverfield that much, so don’t have false expectations about this movie, whether you expect it to be a big sci fi thriller or a sequel to Cloverfield, don’t do that. Go into this movie expecting a great, slow paced, contained, suspenseful thriller about people surviving in an underground bunker.