Happy All-Hallow’s Month! In anticipation of Halloween — which, let’s face it, we’ve been anticipating since last Halloween — Daily Grindhouse will again be offering daily celebrations of horror movies here on our site. This October’s theme is horror sequels — the good, the bad, the really bad, and the unfairly unappreciated. We’re calling it SCREAMQUELS!
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Sometimes we can’t truly appreciate a movie until years after its release. It took decades before we understood that PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE was a musical tour de force. We’re only just coming around now to acknowledging that JENNIFER’S BODY is a clever satire of coming-of-age movies. 2016’s 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE may not soon reveal itself to be an unsung masterpiece, but it does seem to eerily predict current events, events no one could have possibly seen coming when it was made, and for that it deserves some recognition.
Released eight years after CLOVERFIELD, 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE isn’t so much a sequel a story existing within the same universe. In fact, it started as a standalone story, with no connection to CLOVERFIELD at all, until its script was purchased and developed by Bad Robot, J.J. Abrams’ production company. Up until the climax, 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE doesn’t resemble its predecessor at all, relying on a low-key but tense slow burn, rather than jumping immediately into the action. It also feels more like a three-person play than found footage horror with a surplus of characters waiting around to be killed off. Though CLOVERFIELD is a fine, even very good movie on its own, watching it is not required to appreciate the full impact of 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE. They’re two completely different movies.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead is Michelle, who, after she’s in a car accident, is held captive in an underground bunker by Howard (John Goodman at his intimidating best), who informs her that there’s been an invasion of some kind, rendering the air toxic and incompatible to human life. A younger man, Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr.), is trapped with them in the bunker as well, and backs up Howard’s story about the invasion, though Michelle has no memory of such a thing. Abiding by Howard’s insistence that setting so much as a foot outside will result in a death, Michelle and Emmett become a tense little family of three with him, as Howard alternately treats Michelle like a daughter, and simmers with jealousy at Emmett’s presence.
As the film goes on, it becomes apparent that while something is going on outside, Howard may be, at minimum, overstating the dangers they face if they leave the bunker. It’s also possible that something even more sinister is behind Howard’s claims about a dead daughter, who just happens to resemble a girl who went missing from a nearby town two years earlier. Before the aliens show up, much of the horror in 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE comes from gaslighting, as the audience tries to discern how much of what Howard tells Michelle is true, how much he himself believes might be true, and how complicit Emmett is in any of it. It manages to be more unsettling than its predecessor, albeit in an entirely different way.
But, of course, it’s not just the gaslighting that makes it eerily prescient of current events, but the very concept of paranoia forcing characters into lockdown. The idea of an airborne virus making it so that leaving our homes could be dangerous might have seemed a bit fantastic in 2016, and yet…here we are. The pressure may be off a bit now, but in spring of 2020, when the U.S. was in the clutches of the first wave of COVID-19, other people were the enemy, and every surface was viewed with suspicion, a possible petri dish for disease. We didn’t know any more about what was going on than the characters in 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE do, and responded to that in kind, with fear and, occasionally, violence. There isn’t a scene where Howard scrubs down his groceries with antiseptic wipes, but there might as well be.
When Michelle manages to escape the bunker and encounters both clean air and aliens, it’s almost a bit disappointing. It feels like what it is — a tacked-on afterthought to tie it to CLOVERFIELD. Up to that point, and watching it through the lens of 2021, it’s an eerie experience, and a stark illustration of something we’re averse to admit: when faced with the unknown our first thought is not for our fellow man, but for keeping ourselves “safe” — no matter what the cost.
Tags: Bad Robot Productions, Bear McCreary, Bradley Cooper, Damien Chazelle, Dan Trachtenberg, J.J. Abrams, Jeff Cutter, John Gallagher Jr., John Goodman, Josh Campbell, Lindsey Weber, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Matthew Stuecken, Sequels, Suspense, Suzanne Cryer
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