Kevin's Watch

I went to see 10 Cloverfield Lane last night, and it was sooooo gooooood. Really tense, frightening atmosphere that builds up through the whole thing; it's really treated like a horror film in the way it's put together, even while everything else is a mashup of a few different genres. The way the ending played out was unexpected but awesome. I can't really say anything without spoiling. John Goodman is really great in his role as Howard.

+JMJ+

Thanx. Will keep a heads-up for it.

I keep hearing that Goodman does creepy very well. I am hoping to see this. And I'm avoiding spoilers, so bye!

wayfriend wrote:I keep hearing that Goodman does creepy very well. I am hoping to see this. And I'm avoiding spoilers, so bye!

see Barton Fink to see Goodman playing creepy.

want to see this movie, big fan of the original.

Absolutely going to see this one Murrin and masively looking forward to it! Will report back with the results.

I saw it opening weekend, and really enjoyed it, but now I have more questions than ever. Damn that JJ Abrams.

I've been wondering whether it'd actually hold up on a repeat viewing. A whole lot of my enjoyment was because of how tense I was wondering what was going to happen next.

Yeah, I suspect it won't, unless there are a bunch of things hiding within the movie you don't notice on the first viewing. But in general, that's what I hated about the majority of M. Night Shymalan movies, even when he was still doing somewhat reasonably good stuff (up until Signs, in my book).

(Off topic; would that include Signs as well Cag?)

Re 10CL, yes - tense, gripping and well crafted ....... but for me personally, I'm just not sure it survived it's own hype. My expectations ran so high on the back of rave reviews etc that I think I'd built it up too high. But a damn fine example of a thriller it remains.

(Edit; Watching Witch tonight and I have fears the same may happen here.)

[2nd edit; interesting point re the scene in which one cast member does a brief bit of stitching on another's skin wound [no serious spoiler there I hope]. The suture needle used to perform the minor surgery is known as a round bodied circular and is not the needle of choice for performing skin sutures. As a needle with no cutting edge it is perfect for continuous gut sutures but not really suitable for skin where a curved triangular cutting needle is required to penetrate the tough skin. My point is this - was the use of the wrong needle deliberate, a reference to the inexperienced nature of the gatherer of the surgical material in collecting the items for his medical survival kit, or was it simply a sloppy bit of research in getting the detail right and just not being to 'anal' about the small stuff? (to anyone with any experience of medical stitching the 'mistake' is a glaring one however.)]

I would include Signs as well. In that Signs was a callback to those bad 1950's sci-fi movies where the aliens are killed by something stupid. Seems like the start of his career was spent taking a genre that had been handled poorly in the movies of late, and doing them artistically and treating them with respect. Which, you have to say, he was pretty successful with for at least his first 3 films. Then he tried his hand at the "there's some nasty in the woodshed" type movie, and it all fell apart. Plus, the twist endings really just needed to stop.

Maybe M Night just needs to make every film one where Bruce Willis is the lead and has a kid as costar. It's the only formula that seems to work for him.

I never had a problem with The Village but most people seem to agree it's where his troubles began. For me it was The Lady In The Lake where it all started to fall apart.

I actually like The Lady In the Lake a bit more than The Village. Maybe if I didn't guess the twist of The Village in the opening shot of the film...

I guess to get into things for the original topic, I didn't realize that the whole Cloverfield thing

Spoiler

was an alien invasion.

I don't know how I didn't put that together until this movie. It seemed a bit clearer, and I wonder if there will be another movie in this series that will actually address some things from the pieces we've received.

10 Cloverfield Lane is not a sequel - it's not set in the same universe as Cloverfield. There is, however, talk about a possible sequel to this one.

Am I the only one who didn't enjoy this movie? Goodman was great, the rest of it was OK, except for the ending which was over-the-top ridiculous.

Of course, a lot of the tension wouldn't have been there if it weren't building up to the ending.

Mainly, I just got tired of all the "Aha!" moments with character reveals. When every five minutes you learn that everything you know is wrong, you just stop caring about being surprised.