Pretty good... up to the final 10 or so minutes

Rating: Null/10 (29 June 2016)

When you set the majority of your movie in one basic location, more often than not you have your work cut out for you. So credit needs to go to all the participants who worked on "10 Cloverfield Lane" for making the movie very compelling... up to the finale. Before I get to that finale, a few words on the best things about the movie. The acting is very good, particularly by the underrated John Goodman. Goodman and the other actors are fortunate to have roles that are written to be much smarter than usual; even the character that turns out to have a dark background is not stupid - which makes him scarier. And while most of the movie takes place in one basic location, the writers manage surprisingly to unfold new challenges and plot turns on a regular basis. It certainly never gets boring.
The only real misstep of the movie is with the final few minutes. The video store clerk warned me of this ending by telling me that the end was "weird", and after watching it I have to agree with her to a degree. It doesn't really fit the down to earth and believable attitude the movie had up to that point. I know with a modern day movie like this that the audience expects some "big" twist at the end, but for me it didn't seem right. The business with the Molotov cocktail made things really unbelievable. I guess the movie is still worth seeing, but the misguided ending prevents the movie from being a minor classic and downgrades it to being merely entertaining.