Related, But Not Really A Sequel

Rating: 7/10 (11 March 2016)

I saw "10 Cloverfield Lane", starring John Goodman-Love the Coopers, Speed Racer; Mary Elizabeth Winstead-A Good Day to Die Hard, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and John Gallagher Jr.-The Newsroom_tv, Jonah Hex.
This is a weird movie to talk about. J. J. Abrams is the producer and said that he did not want the audience to know a lot about the movie before seeing it. He said that a lot of trailers give away the whole plot of a movie. That is why most people don't know much about the plot of this movie. Is it a sequel to Cloverfield? Well, it is related, but only loosely, at least so far. I say so far because once you see the ending, you know there will probably be a sequel and they could explain everything in it. This one is not shot using the hand-held camera gimmick from the first movie-Thank Goodness! There is also no giant creature terrorizing the city, although you do see a small creature of some kind, near the end. From what I could tell, this one also takes place several years after the first one. Mary is driving on a country road when she has an accident. She wakes up in an underground bunker chained to the wall. She finds out that John Goodman came across her crash site and brought her back to the bunker. He tells her that there is radiation outside from an unknown attack-Russians, Iranians, or maybe even Aliens?-and it is unsafe to leave the bunker. John Gallagher is also already in the bunker but not a prisoner. Slowly, Mary starts to feel that John Goodman may not be telling her the whole truth about his actions-he does act a little weird at times and his facts don't always make sense. FYI: When Mary gets a message from her boyfriend at the beginning of the movie you might want to see if you recognize the voice; it's Bradley Cooper. By the way, the title of the movie, 10 Cloverfield Lane, is the address of the bunker. It's rated "PG-13" for violence and language and has a running time of 1 hour & 43 minutes. I enjoyed it but I wished it had a better ending-Like I said earlier, I'm sure they are setting things up for the next installment-I would buy it on DVD.