A woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) awakens in a shelter in which she is held hostage by a possibly dangerous stranger (John Goodman) who claims he has rescued her from an apocalyptic event. While 10 Cloverfield Lane subscribes to producer JJ Abrams’ usual mystery box formula, director Dan Trachtenberg refreshingly replaces the Spielbergian aura with something more sinister. Trachtenberg’s film is maddeningly taut, repeatedly ratcheting up the tension with a myriad of frightful scenarios and skillful editing. The cast is uniformly fantastic, and, despite the tension, 10 Cloverfield Lane is bracingly fun (and funny). The ending is a pretty drastic (some might say catastrophic) shift in tone and scope, which will either thrill or alienate audiences. I admired the batshit insanity of it.
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