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It’s an idea that has been carried forward for some time in various films: to portray alien invasions but give space mainly to how people on Earth see them, record them, perceive them, and not so much on how they occur. I am referring to three films: Cloverfield (2008), Super 8 (2011), and this new 10 Cloverfield Lane. The common denominator is J. J. Abrams, in the role of producer or director. While the first two were very good films, this one is perhaps even more interesting, for different reasons.
First of all, it proposes a quite new way of creating a franchise: as explained well on Il Post, «The film was originally meant to be something completely different with a completely different title and only while it was already in production it was decided to change certain things to make it a “Cloverfield”» and indeed the story has almost nothing in common with the 2008 film, except for the fact that there are (possibly) aliens. The title is therefore an eminently commercial move, but nonetheless, the film carries forward the discourse of point of view already well explored in the other two aforementioned works.
The vision of the aliens, in this project, is interesting more for its limits, its lacks, the gaps, the limited understanding of the protagonists. This time the limitation is even greater: the protagonist doesn’t know if the alien invasion is real or not because she finds herself in a fallout shelter built by Howard, a marvelous John Goodman. The inability to verify the actual existence of the apocalyptic event is certainly a brilliant move to build an unusual story; Michelle, after a bad car accident, wakes up in the shelter and, according to what Howard and Emmet say, cannot go out to check the danger because the air is infected.
Without revealing too much, I think this decidedly good idea was not exploited to its fullest; the doubt about the “aliens yes/aliens no” question could have been prolonged more. Nevertheless, the handling of the two main issues is decidedly valid and organic. As is clear, the other issue concerns Howard’s intentions: is he a strange and somewhat maniacal man or does he intend to abuse his guest, whom he claims to have saved from certain death? Much of the film's tension plays on this dichotomy, and although some details that are at least suspicious are revealed quite soon, it manages to maintain great uncertainty over Howard's intentions for much of the film’s duration.
The plot construction works for two main reasons: its simplicity on one hand (which does not make the issue trivial, but only more incisive) and the nice portrayal of the three characters, as well as the fine polish of the relationships that develop between them. From this point of view, John Goodman’s quality of acting is crucial to making the entire web of alliances and suspicions, betrayals and absolutions work. The other two actors are by no means subpar, holding their relatively more straightforward parts well.
In short, with only three actors and a single setting, 10 Cloverfield Lane delivers the maximum possible result, or almost. [Spoilers from here] However, it is a pity that all the prerogatives aimed at subtraction are fundamentally betrayed in the last 10 minutes of the film when millions of dollars are thrown into special effects that frankly were not needed. Such an ending definitely dampens the allure of uncertainty, of never being 100 percent sure that the aliens exist and that the air is poisonous. A completely tragic closure would have been much more compelling, a bloodbath in Michelle and Emmet's attempt to escape (only to meet an even more painful fate).
Moreover, if Howard is an excellent character, Michelle, on the other hand, does not have a very complex psychology: for example, is the choice to face the aliens rather than Howard’s perversions so flat and predictable? Wasn’t there another way to solve the problem, given that they were two and Howard was alone? In short, there are some flaws, and there is definitely a greater desire to create tension than to develop a coherent psychological analysis until the end. This, together with the somewhat hasty handling of the doubt about the existence of aliens (after a few minutes Michelle sees an infected woman through the door glass) penalizes a film that is otherwise satisfying from many other points of view.
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