10 Cloverfield Lane is not a sequel, not a spinoff, but appears to exist in the same universe as the 2008 found footage film “Cloverfield.” The movie was directed by Dan Tractenburg, who directed a short called Portal: No Escape, which is based on the hit series of games created by Valve. The movie stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead (A Good Day to Die Hard), John Goodman (Argo), and John Gallagher Jr (Oliver Kitterridge).

We are first introduced to Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character during the intro, which was a pretty cool opening by the way, and all of sudden, shabam! She gets into a car accident, next thing we know she’s trapped in a room located in an underground bunker, John Goodman comes in and claims he’s trying to keep her alive and she must stay where she is if she wants to live. Although in the meantime he starts to make Mary’s character have suspicions of what she’s gotten herself into so she wants to leave. Overall I will say that this character’s performance feels real and happened to be one of the movie’s best qualities.

As I mentioned recently, John Goodman is playing a survivalist in an underground bunker in this movie. When I first saw him, I thought of him as an a$$hole and it worked for his character. Then all of sudden he calmed down during the movie but it doesn’t last because later on he goes back into a$$hole mode again and I no complaints about it, the moods matched with the character although at times him being an a$$hole may have been overexaggerated.

The best thing about this movie to me was John Gallagher Jr’s character. He too was trapped inside the underground bunker and at one point the three main characters are having dinner and John Gallagher Jr. is talking and the topic at hand has to do with wondering what you wanted to accomplish before you die that you haven’t done. John Gallagher Jr. says he wanted to get tattoos at some point, however he hasn’t done that in his life and it made me think of things I want to do before I die. If it were me thinking about this topic, I would say the following: Go to San Diego Comic-Con, make a Hollywood movie, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever do this but win the lottery.

One thing that makes my head spin about this movie is there are like just a few correlations to Cloverfield. However despite the correlations, those are either unnoticable unless you are a true fan, or something along the lines you having your eyes glued to every pixel on the screen, and it makes you question whether this really should be deserving of the Cloverfield name. I am not a true fan, and I actually had to Google search possible correlations between the two movies. The ending makes me wonder even more, like, literally, it made me think more than I had to, and this all drags the movie’s score.

10 Cloverfield Lane actually looked extremely thrilling from the TV spots I saw around the time of this movie’s release. Did I get those thrills? Yes. Although you know what I also got? Mind-boggled. It’s a movie that says Cloverfield on the title, but there’s not much to do with Cloverfield other than being scary, and perhaps some easter eggs. I’m going to give 10 Cloverfield Lane a 6/10. I really enjoyed the movie when I first saw it, but the more I think about it, the worse it gets, and I’ll be honest, finding a score for this movie was rather hard. It could change soon, you never know. Other than Equity, I have no planned movie reviews at the moment, we’ll have to see what happens. Stay tuned for more reviews and Scene Before is your click to the flicks!