10 Cloverfield Lane – I’m now a ‘Cloverfield Convert!’

A few years ago, ‘Cloverfield’ was released.  If you missed it, it was one of those ‘found footage’ films where everything is shot by the point of view of one really annoying character who won’t put the camera down no matter how much danger comes their way.  Sorry, I digress.  I really don’t like the ‘found footage’ genre.  I find it cheap, annoying and just downright implausible.  It was because of this that – despite ‘Cloverfield’ being a massive hit, I hated it.  A giant Godzilla-like alien monster started rampaging through a major U.S. city and the story was about a small band of survivors fleeing the area.  One of them had to film the hold experience because… I don’t know.  I just remember getting really frustrated with the film because he wouldn’t stop filming even when his leg was being eaten by little monsters.  Anyway, it was because of that which meant I wasn’t that bothered about seeing this sequel.  Only it’s not a sequel.  Or is it?

For a start it’s not ‘found footage’ any more (hooray!) and we meet a girl who gets into a bad car accident on the way home.  She’s dragged from the wreckage by good ol’ John Goodman who takes her home and they live happily ever after.  Only joking.  He’s actually a paranoid nut-job who built a ‘perfect’ survival bunker just in case the world should happen to end and he wanted to go on living.  So, our heroine wakes up there, injured and a little frightened.  Especially as Mr Goodman won’t let her leave.  The closest she gets is the reinforced steel door where she can look out over the stricken world.  Only it’s not that stricken.  It looks quite normal, but Goodman swears that there’s enough fallout out there to nuke a cockroach from the inside out.  So, she’s trapped, with no idea what’s happened.  Can she get out?  Should she, even if she could?

Anyway, because most people have either seen, or are aware of, the first movie with the giant monster etc, we assume something bad has indeed happened to the rest of the world.  Only this film doesn’t really follow on from the original ‘Cloverfield.’ So, the longer it goes on, you wonder whether you’re actually watching a sequel at all, or another film that has sort of piggybacked off its name/fame and has created something different all together. ‘Cloverfield’ was a big budget monster/horror movie whereas ’10 Cloverfield Lane’ is small, low budget and confined to the bunker for the whole time.

And, in my opinion, it’s the superior movie by far.  John Goodman is excellent as the paranoid nutter who is probably the last person you want to be stuck on Earth with and you’re rooting for our heroine to escape (assuming there’s a world left to escape to!).  It’s more psychological horror than giant-monsters-crushing-New-York-horror and it’s all the better for it.  I hear that some people weren’t too keen on the ending, but, even if you hate it, you should hopefully enjoy the preceding 90% enough to just ignore the very last few scenes.  I wouldn’t watch Cloverfield again, but I’d definitely watch this in a few years time.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that