JJ Con Trick

Rating: 1/10 (18 March 2016)

I loved Cloverfield which for me was one of the best films of the 21st Century. I saw it in a cinema and loved it and watched it a dozen times since on DVD and still love it.
Cue Super 8 which insinuated it had a Cloverfield connection but was just about a bad CGI alien spider that made a space ship out of a water tank. Not a bad movie but not great either.
Then out of the blue comes a trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane which may or not be a Cloverfield sequel. The clever use of the word Cloverfield hints at a connection and then J.J. Abrams feeds that with his comments.
If like me you loved Cloverfield then try to be unlike me and don't waste 10 pound on this absolute crock of a movie. Massively disappointed and feel cheated after watching this garbage.
A girl wakes up after a crash in an underground shelter with a young bloke with a poorly arm and John Goodman. He tells her he 'rescued' her as there had been an attack and it's not safe above ground.
In the trailer we see
.....the girl fight her way up the stairs and peer out the doorway with a look of shock. Con trick as it's not what you (and I) probably thought.
.....Something huge seems to walk over the shelter causing stuff to fall on the floor. Again a completely unexplained scene that later makes absolutely no sense at all.
.....The famous drum scene as Goodman dons gloves and starts to open a 40 gallon steel drum. Could it be a Clovy parasite? Or something equally strange and interesting? No it's a nothing scene that reveals nothing we imagined it would be. It does have a bit of shock value and is a central plot device for the finale but still nothing of any great interest to Cloverfield fans.
......Then the outside scene with the explosion the gas mask and the light and roar approaching the barn. When that was revealed I thought WTF?
There we have it. Whilst there may have been some cursory nods to Cloverfield they flash by so quickly that they are not noticeable without freeze and rewind buttons which my cinema did not have. Simply clever marketing using the name Cloverfield prominently to attract attention to a pretty dull psycho film with some utter bilge to end it with. It says something when the film makers have to nick scenes from the incredibly awful WOTW by Stephen Spielberk.
The acting was very mediocre with John Goodman, who is a great actor, seemingly catching a nap as he delivered his lines. The sound was terrible and even in a cinema I could barely hear what was said. The CGI for the finale would make the Sci-Fi channel blush.
I left the theatre 10 pound lighter robbed of nearly 2 hours of valuable time and completely disillusioned with J.J. Abrams All that for this complete twaddle that Alan Smithee would disown.