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Trailer Trashin’: What’s Happening in the 10 Cloverfield Lane Trailer?

Timothy Monforton

Hello again, dear readers. We’re in the middle of January, and it’s still slim pickings in terms of new movies, although I plan on checking out the new horror movie The Boy this weekend. But there are still cool new trailers for me to watch and analyze. This week’s column takes a look at the first trailer for the upcoming science-fiction mystery thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Premise: Waking up from a car accident, a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) finds herself in the basement of a man (John Goodman) who says he’s saved her life from a chemical attack that has left the outside uninhabitable.

My take: In this day and age of 24/7 media coverage, it’s nearly impossible for a film to truly sneak up and surprise us. One film that did manage that was Cloverfield (2008), the found-footage giant monster film from producer J. J. Abrams, the existence of which was not even known prior to the first trailer dropping. And now Abrams and company have pulled the same kind of trick on us with 10 Cloverfield Lane, a film originally known as The Cellar and whose final title was only revealed when the trailer was released on January 15 of this year. Abrams has described the new film as “a blood relative” of Cloverfield, but what exactly does that mean?

The action shown here all takes place inside this big basement/survival shelter, and involves there currently unnamed characters, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, and John Gallagher, Jr. It starts out almost like a fun comedy, with the three hanging out together, playing board games, and listening to music on a jukebox. Then the place is shook by an earthquake, and everything takes a turn for the worse. Goodman starts acting irrational and violent and carrying a gun. Winstead is handcuffed to a pipe, and an electrical cord catching fire and starting a big blaze. The trailer ends with Winstead smashing Goodman in the head with a glass bottle and then rushing up the stairs toward the doors to the outside, with Goodman right behind her. She gets through the first door, and slams it shut to stop him from following. As she fumbles with the keys for the second door, he screams: “Don’t open that door! You’re going to get all of us killed!” She looks through the window, although our view is conveniently blocked, and is horrified by whatever it is she sees. We hear Goodman say, “Something’s coming,” followed by the title card.

Of course, the big question is what connection, if any, this film has to the original Cloverfield. It is certainly possible that does take place in the same universe, and the thing these people are hiding from is the monster or monsters. The other big possibility, which others have already brought up, is that the two films have no direct ties, and the filmmakers are using the “Cloverfield” name for an anthology of sorts. This would be similar to what John Carpenter and Debra Hill tried to do with Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), which had nothing to do with Michael Myers and instead explored different kinds of horror. The tagline on the film’s poster is “Monsters come in many forms,” but does that just refer to Goodman’s character being a psycho who seems normal at first glance, or is there something else out there?

Ultimately, we’ll only know for sure what’s going on when the film comes out. But what they show here has me intrigued. When early March comes around, I definitely want to check out 10 Cloverfield Lane.

ANTICIPATION: Something is out there, and I want to know what it is.

Release Date: March 11th, 2016

Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, and John Gallagher, Jr.
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Writers: Josh Campbell, Matt Stuecken, and Damien Chazelle

Timothy Monforton

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