What’s a rapid review, you ask? A more condensed version of my original reviews of course. Duh. Ok – let’s go! 10 Cloverfield Lane – for those who don’t know, was originally a script called The Cellar. And that script sat on the shelf – until JJ Abrahms’ company got a hold of it, read it, and decided to modify it to be a loose ‘sequel’ to 2008’s Cloverfield.
Ok, so we’ve got Mary Elizabeth Winstead who plays Michelle, a girl on the run from a relationship who gets in a bad car crash, wakes up in a bunker of sorts chained to a bed. Then comes John Goodman who plays Howard, a peculiar ‘Doomsday’ preparer who built the shelter in case of a nuclear fallout or worse. Rounding out our threesome is John Gallagher Jr. who plays Emmett – a guy who helped Howard build the bomb shack and a guy who’s not as dumb as Howard makes him out to be. And all three of these happy campers are living underground in a pretty sweet bunker, while some not so sweet shit’s going down up above them.
What’s going on? That depends who you ask. Howard insists it’s war – but with who? The Russians? Aliens? Pffft. Aliens. Yeah right. Howard is intense and he likes to clench his fists at the dinner table and is terrible at board games. Michelle and Emmett try and figure out whether or not he’s telling the truth about why they have to be down there. Howard is happy, angry, sad, and likes to dance by the jukebox. Is he crazy? Sane? Rhythmically challenged? Therein lies the beauty of 10 Cloverfield Lane and why I loved it. It’s a guessing game with more twists than Chubby Checker. Geez, that was bad.
The acting is aces and John Goodman theoretically should get an award nod for his performance. The first 3/4 of the movie is a tense mixture of a Twilight Zone episode with a little nod to Hitchcock. And spoiler alert: The last section does involve some aliens to tie everything together to Cloverfield, but it is a bit abrupt and awkward. Nevertheless, as with a lot of other people, 10 Cloverfield Lane (still hate that name though) is THE surprise movie for me in 2016 so far. And good god that sound design nearly made me piss myself a few times. Any film that nearly makes me urinate uncontrollably deserves an extra Dirty Horror head in their final score. Go see it!
(4 out of 5)