Few films in recent memory have managed such mystery, and surely that’s to do with the power of producer (not director) J.J. Abrams. The world’s biggest sci-fi director was a key player in getting this ‘blood relative’ (his words) off the ground and allowing it to be made in secret, before (like the beast ‘Clover’ in the original Cloverfield eight years ago) springing it upon the world. But how much is it a sequel to or a prequel to or a reboot of the first film? Well, how much do you really want to know? Does it matter? Can you live without knowing before you rush out and see it? Ah, so many monstrous questions!

A little more information than what’s given in the trailer can be divulged: Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a young Louisianan, is running away from her needy boyfriend, whether just for a little time to think or for good, when she has a car accident over the opening credits. She awakens in a bunker as seemingly the prisoner of Howard (John Goodman), and yet he insists that he saved her life and that she should be grateful, as something apocalyptic has happened above ground and she’s better off below.

Good-ole-boy Emmett (John Gallagher Jr) is down there too, and he sheds a little light on conspiracy theorist and ‘doomsday prepper’ Howard’s character but ultimately doesn’t exactly know what’s going on beyond the airtight door. And we might think that we do (having seen Cloverfield, of course), but naturally we don’t as there’s more going on here, with John Goodman snapping back and forth from nice, sweet John Goodman to scary, menacing John Goodman with unsettling ease.

Directed by Dan Trachtenberg in his feature début (and with the original’s screenwriter Drew Goddard and director Matt Reeves as producers), this is one of the hardest movies to review in ages (as you may have noticed) because any spoilers will lead to a lynching. Suffice to say that this is damn creepy stuff with fine work from Goodman, Winstead and Gallagher, disturbing use of old pop classics (including the trailer’s I Think We’re Alone Now) and a sense of impending danger and suffocating claustrophobia distinctly unlike the original’s city-stomping terrors.

10 Cloverfield Lane is in cinemas now

Rating

3.5/5

Rated

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