10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

Genre: Thriller/Sci-fi

Time: 1h 45mins

Director: Dan Trachtenberg

Quick Summary: A young woman is held in an underground bunker by a man who insists that a hostile event has left the surface of the Earth uninhabitable.

This was absolutely amazing and tense right until the last ten minutes, which semi-ruined everything that came before it. 

Only uses a cast of three people it relishes in its script, and it's incredibly well-acted as well. It keeps a solid focus on the cast and still manages to give a good few twists in its story. They work together brilliantly, others managing to be incredibly intimidating over time and really bring the tension up. I did like how dialogue driven this was because it really needed it. 

All are mainly kept in one area to nothing gets boring. The atmosphere manages to slowly build up at a perfect pace, dropping little bits to lead up to the big twist. It's brilliant at being a phycological thriller, with you constantly guessing what is going to happen. I liked the main question of this film, is it really dangerous outside or are they making it up. The thing is does our main character really want to risk dying just to test this, with a small handful of things shown to them to really confuse them on what to do. 

John Goodman is amazing in this. He portrayed his character brilliantly, portraying a man who never seemed fully good or fully bad, he was mysterious, compelling and awkward. He could take you from thinking he was an honest man, to thinking he is a psycho murderer within a matter of seconds which honestly is really impressive to do. He manages to carry the other half of this film that Mary Elizabeth Winstead doesn't get.

Although sadly, it completely fumbles at its ending. I feel like this would have worked better if they cut out the last ten minutes. It completely changes the tone of the movie and the attitude of our main character. The film begins and proceeds as a psychological thriller/drama about paranoia, and claustrophobia and then turns into an action film. As well a lot of loose ends never really get fully tied up. 

A very good mystery that unfolds flawlessly with a downer of an ending but it's still incredibly good in my eyes. I feel like this would have done much better if it wasn't connected to the Cloverfield series and was its own thing.

7/10

"People are strange creatures. You can't always convince them that safety is in their best interest."