'10 Cloverfield Lane' - Movie Review

"10 Cloverfield Lane" occupies a fairly unusual space among movies: it's technically a sequel to "Cloverfield," but it's a different genre (although which other one isn't entirely clear - this one isn't really horror either but could be classified several different ways), different cast, different style, and the continuity from the previous movie is uncertain.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Michelle, a young woman who packs up and runs out on her fiancée in the first moments of the movie. She drives out into the country, and the credits are interspersed with her car going off the road and flipping over a couple times. When she wakes after the accident, she finds herself injured, in a cinderblock bunker, chained to a bed.

If you haven't seen the movie or the trailers, stop reading now. I'm going to spoil the first 15 minutes (just as the trailers do), but the movie will be even better if you don't watch them or read this.

Michelle (and the viewers) have several minutes of thinking she's going to be raped and/or tortured. Her captor is Howard (John Goodman), who claims that he rescued her from her car accident and saved her in his underground bunker because the world has ended above ground - although he's not entirely clear on what caused it, and she's not at all sure she believes him.

I haven't previously been a huge fan of Winstead's acting, but she does very well here. John Gallagher Jr. is also quite good as the third bunker resident, and Goodman is superb and terrifying as the paranoid and possibly deranged (but maybe not wrong) Howard. I didn't much enjoy the movie, but I have a huge respect for it: it's exceptionally well made.