10 Cloverfield Lane is a 2016 American psychological horror-thriller film directed by Dan Trachtenberg, produced by J. J. Abrams and Lindsey Weber and written by Josh Campbell, Matthew Stucken and Damien Chazelle. The film stars John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and John Gallagher Jr.. It is the second installment in the Cloverfield franchise. The film was developed from a script titled The Cellar, but under production by Bad Robot, it was turned into a spiritual successor of the 2008 film Cloverfield. The film follows a young woman who, after a car crash, wakes up in an underground bunker with two men who insist that an event has left the surface of Earth uninhabitable.
The film is presented in a third-person narrative, in contrast to its predecessor's found-footage style. It was released in the United States on March 11, 2016, in conventional and IMAX format. The film received positive reviews from critics, with many praising the performances of the cast, as well as the film's tense and suspenseful atmosphere; it grossed $110 million worldwide.
Video 10 Cloverfield Lane
Plot
Following a breakup with her fiancé, Michelle leaves New Orleans. Driving through a road in rural Louisiana that night, she hears radio news reports of blackouts in major cities. As she is distracted by her phone ringing, her car is suddenly hit by an oncoming truck and rolls off the road, which knocks her unconscious. She awakes chained to a wall in a concrete room. A man named Howard enters the room and says he is going to keep her alive. After she unsuccessfully tries to ambush him, he explains that he saved her life by bringing her to his underground bunker because there has been a massive attack - possibly by Russians, North Koreans, or Martians - and everyone is dead. He tells a doubtful Michelle that she cannot leave because the nuclear or chemical fallout has poisoned the air for one or two years.
Once she is calmer, Howard takes Michelle on a tour of the well-stocked bunker and she meets the other injured inhabitant, Emmett, who found his way there after seeing a red flash outside. Howard shows Michelle to the outside hatch and through the window points out two dead pigs, evidence of the contamination outside. Michelle also sees Howard's truck and regains the memory of it forcing her off the road.
During the trio's first dinner together, Michelle steals his keys to the hatch, but as she is about to open the door, through the window she sees a woman covered with severe skin lesions, begging to be let inside. Michelle realizes Howard was right and returns his keys. Howard confesses that he had accidentally struck Michelle's car in a panic to get to his bunker.
As time passes, the trio begin adapting to life underground, developing a family-like relationship. However, Howard is intolerant towards Emmett and only perceives Michelle as a little girl. Howard opens up about his daughter who is "not with us anymore". When a ventilator fails, Michelle climbs through an air vent to fix it, being the only one small enough to go through. She discovers a second hatch leading outside, closed with several padlocks and with the word "HELP" scratched on the inside of the viewport so it could be seen from outside. Michelle and Emmett covertly discuss the inconsistencies in Howard's story, realizing that the "daughter" was actually a local girl known by Emmett who went missing two years prior. They secretly begin fashioning a makeshift Hazmat suit to escape the bunker.
Howard discovers several of his tools have gone missing, and interrogates the two, threatening to kill them by immersion in a barrel of perchloric acid. Emmett takes full responsibility and claims that he was trying to make a weapon to get Howard's gun, but that Michelle knew nothing, after which Howard shoots him dead. He later finds the biohazard suit in Michelle's room, and becomes angry. Michelle manages to escape, discovering Emmett's body dissolving in the acid. Michelle kicks the barrel over and Howard falls into the liquid, which burns him and ignites an electrical fire. Michelle escapes through the air vent, dons the suit and opens the shaft.
Outside, she sees birds flying overhead, prompting her to remove her mask and believe that everything Howard told her about the attack was a lie. However, she then sees a tentacled biomechanical spacecraft floating in the distance. She then speculates that the 'attack' that Howard mentioned before was indeed an actual alien invasion of Earth. Suddenly, the bunker explodes from the fire, drawing the craft's attention. Michelle is stalked by an alien creature and after the craft releases a green gas, she is forced to put the biomask back on. She takes shelter in Howard's truck but the craft's tentacles pick it up and raise it towards the ship. Finding the components for a Molotov cocktail, she throws it into the maw of the craft, which explodes, dropping the truck.
Michelle drives away, knocking over a mailbox reading "10 Cloverfield". On the radio she hears of successful human resistance efforts, with the southern coast of North America having been liberated. Survivors are instructed to evacuate north while those able to aid the fight are directed to Houston. At an intersection, Michelle decides to head for Houston, where red lights are seen above the city. As she drives south, lightning flashes reveal larger alien spacecraft heading in the same direction.
Maps 10 Cloverfield Lane
Cast
- John Goodman as Howard Stambler
- Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Michelle
- John Gallagher Jr. as Emmett DeWitt
- Bradley Cooper as Ben (voice)
- Suzanne Cryer as Leslie
Production
Development
10 Cloverfield Lane originated from an "ultra low budget" spec script penned by Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken, titled The Cellar. The Tracking Board included the script in "The Hit List" of 2012 - an annually published list of spec scripts written within the year that have impressed its voting members. In 2012, Paramount Pictures bought the script and commenced further development under Bad Robot Productions for Insurge Pictures, Paramount's specialty label for films with a micro-budget. When Bad Robot became involved, the film was assigned the codename Valencia to keep exact details of the production a secret.
Damien Chazelle was brought in to rewrite Campbell and Stuecken's draft and direct the film. Chazelle dropped out from directing when his Whiplash project received funding. On April 3, 2014, it was reported production for Valencia was greenlit to begin in the fall of 2014, under the direction of Dan Trachtenberg with the latest draft being written by Dan Casey. A budget of about $5 million was reported to be expected, in keeping with the mandate of Paramount's Insurge division of producing micro-budgeted films.
On July 8, 2014, Variety reported John Goodman was in negotiations to star in the film. On August 25, 2014, they reported Mary Elizabeth Winstead had entered negotiations, and on September 22, 2014, John Gallagher Jr. reportedly joined the cast.
During production, the filmmakers noticed core similarities to Cloverfield, and decided to make the picture what Abrams calls "a blood relative" or "spiritual successor" of that film. "The spirit of it, the genre of it, the heart of it, the fear factor, the comedy factor, the weirdness factor, there were so many elements that felt like the DNA of this story were of the same place that Cloverfield was born out of," said Abrams. In other interviews he explained: "Those characters and that monster [from Cloverfield] are not in this movie, but there are other characters and other monsters," and "This movie is very purposefully not called Cloverfield 2, because it's not Cloverfield 2, [...] So if you're approaching it as a literal sequel, you'll be surprised to see what this movie is. But while it's not what you might expect from a movie that has the name Cloverfield in it, I think you'll find that you'll understand the connection when you see the whole thing." Winstead and Gallagher mentioned that during production they were aware that the film had thematic similarities to Cloverfield, but did not learn that there would be an official connection until they were informed of the chosen title, only a few days before the release of the trailer. Abrams came up with the title after finishing Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
In a March 2015 interview, a few months after production wrapped, Winstead was asked about her experience during Valencia and described it as a "really contained film", reiterating the premise of The Cellar about a woman being trapped with her mysterious savior in a supposed post-nuclear fallout world. Later in the month, Insurge Pictures was reported to have been dismantled and its staff absorbed by its parent company. Insurge's only film that had yet to be released was reported to be Valencia. Speaking of rewrites that took place during production, Winstead called them "nothing that was major".
During an interview with Abrams to promote 10 Cloverfield Lane, he said the creative team behind the original had some ideas on developing Cloverfield 2, but the release of films such as Godzilla and Pacific Rim led them to abandon them as they found the concept of kaiju films played out.
Filming
Principal photography on the film began on October 20, 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Filming took place in chronological order on only one set. Scenes involving explosions, fire, and smoke were shot in early December 2014 in Hahnville, Louisiana. Filming ended on December 15, 2014.
Music
Bear McCreary composed the music for the film. The soundtrack was digitally released on March 11, 2016.
Marketing
The film's title was revealed on January 15, 2016 in a trailer attached to 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. As with Cloverfield, a viral marketing campaign was used that included elements of an alternate reality game. Bad Robot kick-started the campaign in early February 2016 by updating the Tagruato.jp website used in the original. The campaign revealed backstory information about the character Howard Stambler and his daughter.
Release
The film was released in select countries on March 10, 2016, in regular and IMAX theaters, before its official release in North America on March 11, also in conventional and IMAX theaters. Those who attended screenings of the film at AMC IMAX theaters were eligible to receive collectible movie posters, which illustrated the three main characters separately. The film was rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for "thematic material including frightening sequences of threat with some violence, and brief language".
Reception
Box office
10 Cloverfield Lane grossed $72.1 million in the United States and $38.1 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $110.2 million.
In the United States and Canada, the film made $1.8 million from its Thursday night previews at 2,500 theaters, and $8 million on its first day (including Thursday previews). In its opening weekend, it earned $24.7 million, finishing in second place at the box office behind Zootopia ($51.3 million), which was in its second weekend.
Outside North America, 10 Cloverfield Lane received a staggered release, across 54 countries. It earned $1.5 million in its opening weekend from six international markets with a bulk of it coming from Australia ($1 million). Overall, the top openings were in the United Kingdom and Ireland ($2.2 million), South Korea ($1.7 million), and France ($1.4 million).
Critical response
10 Cloverfield Lane received positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 90%, based on 274 reviews, with a weighted average score of 7.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Smart, solidly crafted, and palpably tense, 10 Cloverfield Lane makes the most of its confined setting and outstanding cast--and suggests a new frontier for franchise filmmaking." Metacritic gives the film a score of 76 out of 100, based on 43 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.
Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times gave 10 Cloverfield Lane four stars out of four, commending the film as "continually gripping and extremely engrossing ... [Dan Trachtenberg] helmed this film with artistry, imagination and skillful precision." Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times praised the cast's performance and Jeff Cutter's cinematography, while writing: "Sneakily tweaking our fears of terrorism, '10 Cloverfield Lane,' though no more than a kissing cousin to its namesake, is smartly chilling and finally spectacular. A sequel is virtually a given." Alan Scherstuhl of Village Voice also praised the acting and technical aspects, but wrote that the film "is less compelling in terms of character and meaning."
In a mixed review for Slant, Chuck Bowen found a lack of character development between the three leads, and labeled the film's ending as anticlimactic. Bowen also writes: "The film hits its expositional narrative marks and nothing else ... 10 Cloverfield Lane will almost immediately evaporate from the mind, before J.J. Abrams commences in selling you the same thing all over again." Soren Andersen of the Seattle Times, who gave 10 Cloverfield Lane one and half stars out of four, similarly criticized the film's ending, labeling it as "full-bore" and "Too little. Too late." James Verniere of the Boston Herald disapproved of the characters and pacing, and he ultimately described the film as "a crummy, low-rent, intellectually bereft thriller."
Accolades
Future
Having originally planned the film as a direct sequel to Cloverfield, Abrams suggested that he has thought of something that if they are lucky enough to get it made "could be really cool that [it] connects some stories" in a third film, even teasing a larger Cloverfield universe. Interviews with Trachtenberg and Winstead confirm that the movie is, and always was intended to be, an expansion of the first film, with Trachtenberg calling it the "Cloververse". Winstead has voiced her interest in returning for another installment.
In October 2016, it was revealed that the Abrams-produced God Particle will be the third installment in the Cloverfield franchise.
See also
- List of films featuring extraterrestrials
References
External links
- Official website
- 10 Cloverfield Lane on IMDb
- 10 Cloverfield Lane at Box Office Mojo
- 10 Cloverfield Lane at Rotten Tomatoes
- 10 Cloverfield Lane at Metacritic
- 10 Cloverfield Lane at AllMovie
Source of article : Wikipedia
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