John Goodman is adept at playing snuggly (think Sully from Monster’s Inc) and sadistic (the bald-pated enforcer in The Gambler), and sometimes both in the same film (Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski).
But he’s never more conflicted and terrifying than here in 10 Cloverfield Lane as Howard, the man who is saviour and captor rolled into one for a woman named Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).
Michelle leaves a bad relationship behind and hits the road. After a spectacular crash (thank you, sound design, for the loudest opening credits in recent memory) she wakes up with an IV in her arm, but she is most definitely not in a hospital room. The dingy surroundings are her first clue; the fact that she is chained up is a close second.
Howard tells her that she’s lucky to be alive, thanks to him, and not just because of the crash: there has been an apocalypse, and the two of them just made it below ground to Howard’s plush doomsday-prepper abode in time.
Make that three: Emmett (John Gallagher Jr) is there, too. A man who has “lived life in a 40-mile radius,” Emmett came of his own accord after seeing a strange flash of light in the sky.
The scariest part of Dan Trachtenberg’s film, initially, is watching three strangers trying to come to grips with the fact that they might be each other’s everything for a year or more. There’s running water, breathable air, food and even DVDs and a jukebox. They never have to leave.
So, maybe Howard is crazy. “Crazy is building your ark after the flood has already come!” he rants. Even after irrefutable proof emerges that something really bad has happened on the surface, Michelle would still rather take her chances outside than face whatever may come in the bunker.
It’s in the same vicinity as Cloverfield, the found-footage, 2008 hit that cost $25 million to make and went on to rake in over $170 million worldwide. After watching both movies, it feels as though a Film Studies 101 prof gave the class a nugget of an idea and told everyone to go make a movie — any movie — based on the concept. Fans of the original may take exception to this loose association and with the fact that there are really two movies at play here: the confinement thriller and the last 15 minutes, during which the Cloverfield connection emerges.
It’s a shame to say anything about the film at all, so closely guarded was all news and press of the film. (The notoriously secretive J.J. Abrams is a producer.) Go see it opening weekend, while details are refreshingly scant and before that idiot tweets all the spoilers.
What we can say is that Goodman is fantastic as a man in possession of at least one terrible secret, and that Winstead (best known for The Spectacular Now, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World) shines in the film’s breathless last act. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a thrilling, fun piece of the ever-expanding Cloverfield puzzle.
10 Cloverfield Lane opens this week at Scotiabank, Fifth Avenue and Dunbar.
