Well, there it is. The franchise I never knew I wanted.
Cloverfield, in all its post-9/11 horrific glory, stole a bit of my heart way back eight years ago, but I never really thought it would become a franchise. It's a good solid flick on its own, deceptively simple and daringly, well, daring. I figured, if anything, a sequel would follow [REC]'s example and maybe just do a sister film, a comparison point with similar found-footage style camerawork and repeated themes. But after so many years -- and a fairly polarized audience, with horror fans either loving or hating it -- I don't think any of us saw this coming.
Going in, you need to know a couple things about 10 Cloverfield Lane. First: Don't even think about comparing it to its sister picture. Whereas Cloverfield took Blair Witch into breakneck big-scale horror territory, keeping close to the roots of its real-life horror in senseless, monstrous death and destruction in NYC, this new film instead plays on psychological horror in the vein of home invasion thrillers with a dash of post-apocalyptic spice. Most of the film takes place in a fallout bunker under a conspiracy theorist's rural house, where the owner has locked himself and two young people in out of fear that the outside world has come under biological attack.
The film unfolds fairly quickly, with wildly unpredictable beats and turns. I don't mean "unpredictable" in the sense that you don't know where it's going. It's a bleak enough film to know full well what will happen. But first-time director Dan Trachtenberg does some really amazing emotional work here, mirroring the intense and complex psyches of his characters in the pacing, cinematography, lighting, and editing; he focuses so intently on the people that it's easy to feel more claustrophobic that the film really is. It's a dazzling example of how a director can perform his job with integrity and bravery, undiluted by a previous film, and perfectly balance technique, spectacle, and honesty.
And the performances he captures are, if possible, even more astounding. John Goodman is electrifying as the bestial conspiracy theorist who locks in two helpless young people. In his nightmare-inducing (yes, I had nightmares last night) turn, Goodman is as surprising and vicious as Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight, completely insane yet making perfect sense, burning with his inner passions and concealing particularly insidious demons under his baleful visage. Matching him in energy and wit is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, a shining star of female power in a genre that often subjects such figures to pain, fear, and torment. Winstead carries the film, ceaselessly strong and smart, never sexualized or victimized, an action hero struggling - nay - demanding to be treated as such from the men both on screen and behind it. Her bright, wide eyes reveal far more of her character than her dialogue or even her action choreography, though she delivers in both those realms with admirable ferocity.
It's one of those rare films where every single element joins together in perfect harmony to create a transcendent experience, one that had me shrieking and laughing often at the same time. It's a taut thriller, to be sure, but one with unexpected humor and vast thematic implications. It's also one of those rare sequels that, to my mind, surpasses its predecessor in ways technical and emotional, and also as a result of its being so very different. I might also add that the pacing and overarching drama of the film feels distinctly mixed-genre: The first four-fifths of the film are a sort of home invasion/post-apocalyptic psychological thriller. The final fifth is something else entirely. It's even filmed very differently. Like how in the end of The Cabin in the Woods the thematic import of the film skyrockets into implausible chaos, the end of this film rapidly spirals into a frenzied fever dream of special effects and sci-fi violence. Before you say that's weird and doesn't make sense, I mean to assure you that it works. I don't know how, exactly, but it's not done over-sensationally; at least, not more so than the rest of the film. It fits, and it is profoundly effective in revealing the greater elements of chaos at work in the world of the film. It's operatic, it's enchanting, and by the end of the film, it feels strangely epic in intellectual scope.
But do we see the monster? You might be wondering if this film answers any of the questions posed by the first, and frustrated with the lack of overt monstrosity in the original film. I have an answer for you.
But first, a question: Why does it matter? Perhaps we never saw the huge monster in its entirety in Cloverfield, but doesn't that make it far more terrifying? We saw plenty of its offspring (or whatever they were). We saw all of the death and destruction it caused. I challenge you to go back and watch the news footage from 9/11. Isn't the whole point of horror in the last fifteen years that death is not predictable or just? That's the new face of horror. Terrorism. Biological warfare. Crumbling towers, alien invaders, undead armies, cataclysmic apocalypse. The age of seeing a specific monster (Dracula, the Blob, Michael Myers) is over; now it's religious extremists, political idealists, shadowy terrorist regimes. There's a reason the villains in last summer's continued spy sagas were called Rogue Nation and Spectre.
My answer: No. We don't see "the monster". We see several. We see a gun-toting, amoral conspiracy theorist and control freak who demands absolute power in his little microcosm of people he "saved", who is revealed to be exactly what we suspect from the beginning. We see an alien monster beast attacking our hero near the end. We see a giant flying alien/monster grab our hero and attempt to eat (?) her. We don't see "the monster"; there are many. Which is more horrifying? I couldn't say, though my nightmares were about a human, not a slimy monster with too many teeth. As the tagline says, monsters come in many forms.
I might also add that if you only want to see a movie because of its monster, that says far more about you than the movie. Selah.
IMDb: 10 Cloverfield Lane
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