10 Cloverfield Lane

Karen and I had seen the previews for 10 Cloverfield Lane and thought it might be worth checking out.  The reviews were favorable and Karen wanted to get out after a winter of cabin fever, so we decided to check out the movie.

The last scary movie we'd seen was The Conjuring that left both of us laughing.  Perhaps it's our advanced years, but we just have a higher threshold for movies that want to frighten and impress us.  Cloverfield is really two movies: One very good one and one...well, you be the judge.

The movie starts very quietly with some ingénue wannabe fashion designer who is leaving her fiancé.  We aren't told why, it's just that she's had enough.  She packs up her meager belongings, leaves her engagement ring on the counter and grabs a bottle of booze.  That they show her taking the bottle of booze portends something important, to be sure.

She drives from some unnamed urban area to the sticks and gets a call from her betrothed.  She listens to him and hangs up, then puts his return call to voice mail.  In the darkening night she stops at a gas station and sees a large vehicle pull up in the pump bay behind her, taking notice of the vehicle but not identifying anyone.

The next scene has her driving somewhere in the country listening to music when all of a sudden she's T-boned (the effect is somewhat startling) and ends up in a ditch.  The camera views the wreckage from above and then cuts to a leg in some sort of medical restraint chained to a rail in a cinderblock cell.  It's obvious our ingénue isn't in a hospital.  After she gets her bearings, in walks her protector/jailer Howard played by John Goodman.  Mr. Goodman does a great job portraying someone who's just slightly...off...or is he?  The open question that is never quite answered is whether he's an unbalanced survivalist or a lunatic rapist.  The movie never answers the question straightforwardly, and that's well-done.  To reveal more is to give away the best part of the movie, because for as long as our girl is underground, the movie's quite interesting.

The action picks up when Michelle -- I forgot her name -- meets another denizen of the deep, Emmett.  Emmett has an arm in a sling.  He apparently had to beg Howard to let him into the bomb shelter which, if I'm not mistaken, he helped Howard build.  Emmett's just goofy, but in a good-natured way.  There's never a romance between Emmett and Michelle, although Howard becomes jealous of Emmett.

To go into what else happens in the shelter between Michelle, Emmett and Howard would ruin the good part of the movie.  Needless to say, the twists and turns are at once subtle and jarring.  Had the movie continued down this path, it would have been great.  Unfortunately, it veered into the absurd.

The one revelation that's necessary at this point is when Michelle tried to escape the bunker, only to be confronted by some woman on the outside pounding on the door to be let in.  The woman's face is damaged by something -- gas?  chemicals?  fire? -- and Michelle, at Howard's urging, doesn't let her in.  The question that the three subterranean dwellers ponder is whether an invasion has occurred, and whether it's an invasion of man or alien.  The woman's appearance at the door doesn't clarify this but drives the question even more.

Finally, Michelle gets out.  As she's liberated from her jail below ground, she sees what looks like a spaceship out over the cornfields that surround the shelter.  Sure enough, tentacle-like extremities come out of the ship and blobs are seen in the distance going down the tentacles.  Think seeing a snake eating a rodent.  Michelle, now that one question is answered, ponders her next move, but can't find the keys to Howard's truck before these large, oversized maggots with eel-like mouths track her.  She manages to drive them off and then runs to the house at 10 Cloverfield Lane, where the spaceship looms over the house and follows Michelle as she runs to Howard's truck.  Fumbling for the keys she and the truck are taken by the ship's tentacles upward to the widening maw of the spaceship where an even larger eel mouth awaits.  Michelle -- who by this time has proven herself to be a new age MacGyver -- Yves. St. MacGyver -- resourcefully reaches for that bottle of booze that she took from her home with the ex-fiancé that miraculously survived the crash  and fashions a Molotov cocktail which she lights just in time to throw it into the now-gaping piehole of the spaceship cum alien being.  Not surprisingly, the bomb explodes and kills the spaceship.  Despite the fact that Michelle in Howard's truck is directly beneath the exploding alien ship, she merely drops to the ground with no alien shrapnel or detritus from the ship falling directly down on her.  She scuttles away with nary a cut or a bruise and finds the keys to the car of the woman who died at the hands of the aliens and leaves 10 Cloverfield Lane.  As she turns on the radio, the emergency broadcast system is in full swing, alerting anyone who's out there that safety can be found north of Baton Rouge.  Turning the dial, she comes upon another message that tells anyone listening that the good fight is being made in Houston and that reserves would be really useful.  Dramatically, Michelle stops the car, backs it up past the sign pointing to Baton Rouge and turns toward Houston, with the movie ending.

Forget suspending disbelief.  Verisimilitude?  Not a chance.  But if, like me, you're left shaking your head by the movie, prepare to be chastised:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/17/11255744/10-cloverfield-lane-movie-ending-backlash

That's right.  We're all missing the point.

Had the movie ended with Michelle leaving the bunker and discovering the true story behind Howard, it would have been a better movie.  The need to inject alien beings was ridiculous.  Yet this movie is getting all sorts of critical praise.

I can't believe people get paid to make movies like this.  The sad thing is the confusion and utter cockamamieness of the movie only serve to diminish the fine acting Mr. Goodman gave in this movie. 

To have oversized maggots with eel-like teeth steal his thunder was simply wrong. 

That they also stole our $12 was unforgivable.

(c) 2016 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles