10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) – D. Trachtenberg

I couldn’t quite remember the first Cloverfield (2008) but that didn’t matter because this film has seemingly nothing to do with that NYC monster movie (although producer J. J. Abrams may be threatening a possible third movie that ties them both together somehow).  For what it is, 10 Cloverfield Lane manages to achieve its (limited) goals in a satisfactory fashion.  If that doesn’t sound like a rave review, it’s not.  But as a chamber drama set in a small space, an underground fallout shelter decked out by Howard (John Goodman) and occupied by him and two possible captives played by Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), this manages to produce a good deal of suspense.  We don’t know Howard’s motives for keeping the two prisoners down there and we can’t quite trust his explanation that a chemical or nuclear attack has occurred up above.  Of course, the plot unfurls from there and gradually more is revealed, as Michelle (our chief protagonist) fights to uncover the truth.  And mostly new director Dan Trachtenberg manages to pull this off, aided by Winstead’s strong performance.  I had trouble accepting Goodman as a (potential) bad guy but that’s more a function of his charismatic past performances than his acting here.  So, if you like this sort of B movie produced as an A movie (in Abrams’ terms), then you might like this—or it might be disappointingly shallow.