A refreshing and suspenseful white-knuckle thriller

Rating: 9/10 (17 March 2016)

Throughout the first 80 minutes of this movie, I was widely grinning over the fact that I had just witnessed my second serving of sheer cinematic perfection following Zootopia. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a perfectly crafted and carefully executed attempt at reviving the thriller genre, and it does so with rewarding thought and exceptional creativity. Like all the classic entries in the genre, this one is suspenseful till the point where it becomes unsettling and features a consistent and bona-fide tone of fear from the creepy atmosphere to the sense of paranoia present at every corner and the sense of claustrophobia that will stick with you weeks after seeing the movie. What you can appreciate most about it its desire to sustain the audience's momentum with intelligence and concern until the disappointing and buzz-killing finale.
The riveting screenplay, written to palpably tense perfection by a team of accomplished screenwriters serves a further reminder of how much character and dialogue development contributes to a film, and really makes you appreciate the amount of process and effort put into writing a screenplay. The enthralling and impressive direction by first time director Dan Trachtenberg and the refreshingly beautiful steady cam cinematography offers a uniquely immersive experience as the audience is thrust into the sustained and confined space that the characters are in. The musical score by TV composer Bear McCreary immediately puts you in the moment from the opening second, and contributes to the credibility of certain situations as they start to weigh in. If that wasn't enough to satisfy your cravings, we also get a surprising amount of character development on the two main characters and a pair of dynamic performances from two bona-fide actors that simply chose to give a crap and go the extra mile in contributing to the authenticity of the film.
Let's begin with analyzing the female protagonist played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, in a role that will make her a household name. What impressed me the most is that protagonist is more than your clichéd and stereotypical damsel in distress type character, which makes root for the character and invest enough spirit in her to care about her struggle to escape. She's a thinker who will use everything in her knowledge and training to survivethink Mark Watney from The Martian meets Lara Croft Tomb Raider. Winstead is sensational in this film, and so is the character which she was born to inhabit. Her dedication to the character is evident as she vanishes into the role by displaying every range of emotion so eloquently that you instantly believe that she's in this shuddery and paralyzed state she's so desperately trying to escape from. Equally as phenomenal is John Goodman who's as bizarre, manipulative, and frightening as he's ever been on screen. Goodman's presence is so commanding here that even though his character isn't necessarily a character you'd want to root for, you leave the theater haunted, yet grateful to have seen such a dark, committed, and transcendent performance.
Sounds like the perfect movie right? It would be, if not for the disastrous final act which we'll revert back to right now. To give you a spoiler-free sense of the final act, imagine that you're a university student writing your final essay; your professor is so impressed by the sophisticated beginning and middle portion, that he's already aching to award you an "A+", and he hasn't even finished reading the entire paper. Then when you reach your final body, your talents start to descend leading to a disappointing finale due to change in tone or lack of trying, that kills all the potential displayed before the final body leading up to your conclusion. That should give you an idea of how lazy the finale is.
Until the final act though, 10 Cloverfield Lane is an adrenaline-fueled adventure anchored by exceptional direction and two legitimately credible performances. The screenwriters deserve an enormous amount of credit for crafting such a riveting, inspired, and mysterious project and depicting wit, tension, and fear through dialogue in a screenplay that reminds us of why characters and dialogue are the two most fundamental factors in writing a screenplay. The focused and devoted direction by Trachtenberg demonstrates why he's a filmmaker with a force to be reckoned with, and foreshadows a critically-acclaimed future for the first time director. Winstead hits a new career peak and her dedication to portraying her character as humanly as possible is something that instantly commands our attention and regard. Goodman further demonstrates why he's one of the most cherished actors of his generation with yet another unrestrained, bravura performance. All these factors contributed perfectly into the construction of an invigorating psychological thriller, and despite the finale being a complete mess, 10 Cloverfield Lane is smart, inspired, and solidly crafted cinema for movie-goers.