Mostly predictable but entertaining.
I hadn’t seen 10 Cloverfield Lane because I was pretty sure I had it all figured out, but my friend Dom likes it – and he kind of implied I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. This was intriguing. And Rotten Tomatoes recently posted a list of the 150 best-rated horrors of all time – their lists always skew towards new films and mainstream classics but are otherwise solid – 10 Cloverfield was the highest-rated movie I had not yet seen, so here we are.
I had it all figured out, although the filmmakers do a good job of shifting suspicion and building modest suspense. The whole thing’s a little too clean – it wants to cross Hitchcock with darker Spielberg and on that level it succeeds – but I wanted some gore and nastiness. And that video game survival ending is kind of a mess. It didn’t play for me at all.
Movies like this also suffer for me, ’cause I’d just kill the guy. You hit him with a bottle and knocked him down? Good. But don’t run away, finish him off. You got a pair of scissors? Good. Don’t plan on tying him up and escaping – stab him in the fucking neck. You dumped a bookcase on him? Good. Now bash his skull in.
Maybe, in a horror movie world, I wouldn’t exactly be a good guy?
John Goodman is reliably exceptional, but shout-out to John Gallagher Jr. for the most interesting performance in the film.
in the dark 