Review Round-Up: 10 Cloverfield Lane

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Is it a thriller? A puzzle-box movie? A monster flick? Whatever it is, J.J. Abrams produced 10 Cloverfield Lane reviews are in, and the consensus is…

It’s a smart, delightfully daft, masterful thriller.

Keeping details to a minimum but building on an astute video game analogy – this is the third person, clue-gathering, lateral thinking point and click game to 2008’s visceral first person shooter – The Telegraph heaped praise on its ability to maintain a consistent, suspenseful tone.

“Part of the lasting intrigue of the original Cloverfield was that we never found out exactly what its title stood for – but if the answer turns out to be a smart and suspenseful modern-day Twilight Zone franchise, it would be the most satisfying twist imaginable.”

Anyone looking for a direct parallel with the original Cloverfield, the ‘blood relative’ to this new incarnation, may be disappointed; gone is the serious, shaky handheld aesthetic but what remains, according to ScreenCrush, is best experienced by knowing as little as possible – even if the composite pieces don’t always match up so smoothly

“Despite its thrills, it’s apparent 10 Cloverfield Lane is the product of stitching together two separate ideas. (The film began as a standalone microbudget thriller titled The Cellar and it wasn’t until deep into post-production that the film was retooled into a companion piece to Cloverfield.) The final result is something that feels caught between two genres, at once attempting to be a dramatic thriller then switching gears as a crock pot of sci-fi nightmares. Yet its sheer over-the-top excess and lack of taking itself too seriously allow it to become a delightful, exhilarating concoction of its many pieces, and much more accessible and entertaining than the dizzying cinéma vérité of its parent movie.”

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Comparing the bombast of the original with the stillness of this follow up, Games Radar found much to love in its deliberate atmosphere.

“If Cloverfield assaulted our eyes with seesawing, visceral, found-footage thrills, and our ears with the deafening roar of streaking jets and collapsing skyscrapers, 10 Cloverfield Lane is all about pregnant stillness and screaming silence. [First time director] Dan Trachtenberg is far more traditional in his filmmaking and suspense techniques, right down to the stabbing strings of Bear McCreary’s Bernard Herrmann-esque score, and here delivers a chilling chamber piece in which a bellowed word or a fist thumped down on a table can impact like the Statue Of Liberty’s head bouncing down a Manhattan street

The presence of Whiplash’s Damien Chazelle among the screenwriting credits speaks volumes: [John] Goodman’s Howard is as terrifying as J.K. Simmons’ Fletcher. He might not stop at verbal and psychological abuse, either – 10 Cloverfield Lane burrows deep into horror territory, threatening, at times, to become Martyrs for the masses.”

Speaking of John Goodman (The Big Lebowski), The Hollywood Reporter also praised his performance, alongside those of his co-stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim Vs The World) and John Gallagher Jr (The Newsroom).

“Essentially a three-hander, the highly inventive screenplay — originally titled The Cellar — by newcomers Josh Campbell and Matthew Stuecken (revised by Damien Chazelle before he went on to direct Whiplash) is anchored by a transformative performance from Goodman. Hulking, hostile and wildly unpredictable, he’s like a wounded bear defending his lair who’s forced to accommodate a pair of destabilizing interlopers. On the receiving end of all that poorly restrained aggression, Winstead estimably balances Michelle’s flight-or-fight reactions with an unanticipated resourcefulness and assertive depth of self-preservation that’s a challenging match for Howard’s perverse manipulations. Emmett (John Gallagher Jr) ends up inextricably caught between these two resolute opponents and Gallagher convincingly embodies his perilously shifting loyalties as the horrifying scope of Howard’s transgressions inevitably emerges.”

Ultimately, while praising the word done by director Dan Trachtenberg as he lays enough rug out for the inevitable pulling, Entertainment Weekly felt that the conclusion to the film was less than the sum of its impressive parts.

“For a rookie director, Trachtenberg appears to be a real craftsman, even if what he’s crafting doesn’t add up to as much as you hope it will. Like Shyamalan’s Signs, it’s 90 minutes of anticipation – ominous trap-setting that leads to a big pay-off that is well staged but also a little anticlimactic and hokey. In the end, I wished there was a better payoff to warrant all the mystery.”

10 Cloverfield Lane is released on March 11th.

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