By Keri O’Shea
Frantic, clumsy, urgent, the first thing we see in 10 Cloverfield Lane is a young woman who turns out to be named Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) throwing several of her personal possessions into a box, before hurrying to her car with them and driving away at top speed. This act is not, as you may assume based on the monster movie connections of the title Cloverfield, due to some impending invasion or disaster, and as such it’s also the first of a range of moments in the film where you’re made to second-guess your perceptions, questioning what you might otherwise feel safe to assume. Furthermore, it’s the start of a long process for Michelle: in her quest for personal agency, something which runs throughout the film, we see that she’s first fleeing an unhappy relationship – and even before further events even happen, she seems spooked, looking distrustfully around her, anxious about her decision.
But I said this was just the start of things; right at the point where Michelle seems to have found the fortitude to ignore yet another phonecall from her jilted ex and is ready to go on her way – BAM. A serious car accident flings her car off a bridge and renders her unconscious, badly injured. The next thing she’s aware of, she’s waking up in what appears to be a cell – hooked up to a drip, leg in a brace, with no idea who has put her there. Soon thereafter, she meets Howard (John Goodman), the captor who claims to have saved her after the accident.
Howard’s what you’d call a ‘prepper’, someone convinced that they need to stockpile food and resources, as well as building or adapting some sort of shelter, ready for the potentially worst to happen. Here, in an instant, it seems like his paranoid preparations for Doomsday have finally been worthwhile. Hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, yes? Or, maybe not? Michelle’s initial rebellion against being held in Howard’s underground bunker – alongside one other inmate, Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) who got a pass to get inside because he helped Howard to build the place – starts loud and overt but soon, she changes tack – she’s wise enough to adapt. However, she never does shake her suspicions about Howard’s story, and she’s given ample reason for this as the narrative progresses. How does he know for sure what’s out there and what it could do to them, if he hasn’t seen anything himself? Does his back story really check out?
In common with Michelle, you’ll veer between thinking Howard is a dangerous individual, then a decent guy, then right back to start again: kept at arm’s length from any semblance of The Truth, 10 Cloverfield Lane compels us to remain on a level with Michelle throughout, as vulnerable and as conflicted as she. And, actually, the context of the film – as in, whatever is or isn’t outside the surprisingly cosy bunker – is a complicating factor, but the utter dread, the relentless tension offered by the movie – none of that relies on the outside world, because we’re not permitted the omniscience needed to know what’s there in the first place. The real Hitchcock-esque terror here is eight tenths psychological and it works brilliantly well.
I can go no further without mentioning the central performance offered by John Goodman here – and the sizeable impact it has on the film as a whole. Goodman is best-known as a bumbling dad figure, a kind of Homer Simpson made flesh, if I’m permitted to say so; a lot of us who grew up in the 80s will probably first recall him as the dad in Roseanne, and he’s pretty much stuck with it – affable, down-to-earth, practical. The thing here in 10 Cloverfield Lane is that, hey, that bumbling dad persona hasn’t gone. Not quite. Whatever Howard is or isn’t, he can sustain the father figure thing just as much as he can turn on something far darker, and the way in which a tight script and pace wrings the most out of Goodman in his performance here is largely due to the way in which the most intimidating, alarming people are the plausible guys, the normal folk, the ones you’d wave to across the street. That’s Howard. And we wind up second-guessing the guy throughout, even whilst enjoying – if that’s the right word – a number of well-pitched comedic moments, many of which involve him. (A few such examples of light relief showcase some nice echoes of more shocking scenes in later, more banal episodes, but to name ’em is to spoil ’em, I’m afraid.) The warped, possibly paternal dynamic which comes to settle on life underground is inherently disturbing; it’s refreshing, again if that’s the right word, not to have sexually-motivated dominance added in as the default motivational factor here, but then I don’t feel that the film is entirely allowed to go free of that, either. For a film with a very small cast (of largely only three) and a modest running time, there is a hell of a lot going on.
So much so, in fact, that if the film has any weak link whatsoever, it’s where it lobs yet another curveball at us, clearing up for once and all whether or not Howard is right or wrong about the new-found risks beyond. When Michelle gets her answers, when the plot shifts seismically, I can see how another sequence of surprised may cause some viewers to buckle under its weight. Personally, I think it’s a pay-off which more than pays off for Dan Trachtenberg and his team – Trachtenberg, a man with surprisingly limited directorial experience, but god knows if there is any justice, he’ll now be fending off offers of work left, right and centre from here on in.
The narrative arc here never lets us down in 10 Cloverfield Lane, never slumps into a ‘that was it?’ sense of disappointment, and certainly never, never feels boring. An ominous soundtrack, great camerawork and sterling performances throughout add to the overall impact – and prove, moreover, that filmmaking is and can always be rooted in a compelling sense of alienation, of risk, of forces bigger than us – in whatever form these forces might appear. Does Michelle find her personal agency? I advise you to watch the movie, pronto, and find out for yourselves. This is an absolute cert for one of the best films of the year.
10 Cloverfield Lane is on general UK release now.