(Un)Confined Craziness

Rating: 7/10 (17 April 2020)

Re-watching the drama in a bunker that is "10 Cloverfield Lane" is easier to relate to nowadays amid pandemic-related shelter-in-place orders. In a way, it's an amusing diversion to a fictional post-apocalyptic world. Part solid, claustrophobic drama concerning the dynamics of a triumvirate relationship underground--the rest of the picture remains effective, too, if you're willing to roll with the diverting contrivances. I don't especially care about the Cloverfield franchise, although the marketing of the movies has been innovative. This installment, in particular, was shoehorned ex post facto the subterranean-shelter script. Regardless, it rather fits in the sense that things are crazy in the movie from the get-go: from the abduction/rescue of a woman, that what at first seem to be a rape horror flick turns into a conspiracy-theory being validated by Armageddon and back into a sort of rape-threat plot, and that instead of the nut relishing his validation, he's mostly bothered by what little of humanity continues to surround him and exerts his energy on establishing his dominance over them. And that's just the stuff that happens before the bonkers finale.
None of this would work, either, without some decent acting. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is especially enjoyable when in the fighting spirit. It's John Goodman, however, who steals the show. His character is a more horrifying monster than any CGI alien or spacecraft covered by dark and obscure angles and framed by an artificial shaky camera. It's the deeply-rooted human interaction that's terrifying and thrilling--not, frivolous fun though it may be, that franchise-building surface nonsense.