Year: 2016
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
A rare trip to the pictures for us this afternoon and to see a film that was released that day! Unheard of!
But only because we are on holiday and what a pleasure it was.
Trailed as a ‘blood relative’ to the 2008 found footage film Cloverfield (which was OK in a cheesy, aren’t this people really annoying way) this is Dan Trachtenberg’s first directors job.
Basically a three-handed starring John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead & John Gallagher Jr with Goodman & Winstead (who generally lifts the films she appears in, see The Thing prequel) turning in top rate performances.
There isn’t much I can say about the plot except you will change your mind about the Goodman’s true nature and whether the world is as he says. There are three times we jumped out of our seats and the suspense is ratcheted up to breaking point in places.
Some may feel the final act is a massive gear change too far but we both bought into it and walked out with smiles on our faces.
This a brilliant movie with a great performances, superb direction and a gripping story.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Cloverfield (perhaps) Tight, taut thrillers and a other very popular genre which I won’t mention because it will give the massive twist away. Sorry!
Nice review ip, I am looking forward to seeing this, John Goodman nearly always gives good value.
Please tell me there isn’t any of that bloody hand-held camera stuff that plagued Cloverfield!
No wibbly-wobbly camera work here. It’s very claustrophobic…………………. mostly!
Thanks for the review – very much looking forward to seeing this.
I know it’s not everyone’s cuppa, but I’m a big fan of Cloverfield. It has its flaws, but it’s one of the better entries in the “found footage” genre, it has a really interesting perspective on monster movies and the creature is absolutely brilliant. Loses its way in the final third, but the initial build is great. I liked the marketing campaign too – rare these days that a big budget movie gives so little away. Glad to see “Lane” following suit in that regard.
I liked Cloverfield a lot. I am predisposed to give an easy ride to anything that involves a giant monster smashing up buildings but even so I reckon it was a decent film. I need to see this sequel soon, as everything I’ve read about it indicates there’s a massive twist or change of direction, and I want to go in as unspoiled as possible.
I loved Cloverfield. There’s a kind of similar low-budget monster movie called, uh … Monsters … which I’d recommend to any fans of the genre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsters_(2010_film)
Yeah, Monsters is great. If you didn’t know, Gareth Edwards the director did all the special effects on a computer in his bedroom. His next gig was the recent Godzilla movie, and now he’s making the new Star Wars film. Done alright for himself.
Saw it this afternoon, loved it! Very difficult to talk about without spoilers, and I am glad I went in clean. John Goodman is brilliant, as is Mary Elizabeth Winstead. The directorial sleight of hand makes you frequently reassess what you think is really going on, and the building tension is well handled. An afternoon well spent.
Saw this last night in a double bill with equally intriguing puzzlerama ‘Midnight Special’ which I recommend checking out without knowing too much about before yo go in, much like 10 CL
Yes it goes all over the place in the last 10 minutes but the film is genuinely gripping and claustrophobic up to that point. Heart pounding and nail-biting stuff.
SPOILERS: WALK AWAY FROM THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T YET SEEN IT.
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I finally caught up with this and … I am disappoint. Not with 95% of the movie. Just the first few minutes and the last. The middle is as good as everyone says it is, so it seems a bit carping of me to dock it a star. But the pre-credits sequence, showing why the woman is in the car, is totally unnecessary and adds nothing to the story. I wonder if it was added later, because the credit squence – where the story begins – is brilliantly edited and dramatic and tells us all we need to know (that she’s driving a car, basically). So there’s that.
Anyone who saw (or heard of) Cloverfield knows it’s a monster from outer space movie (one of the best of the genre), so you don’t have to be psychic to expect monsters from outer space appearing here. So I have no problem with that, and the effects are brilliantly underplayed and scarily effective. But I don’t think the last couple of minutes are a satifactory resolution. They certainly prepare the way for the next movie (11 Cloverfield Lane, anybody?) but that’s a cheap end to the story. So – two thumbs up, but one of the thumbs has a hangnail.
Are you talking about the very end where (being deliberately vague) the lead is deciding which direction to drive in? I didn’t think of it as a sequel hook – if there is another Cloverfield film I’d like it to have the same tenuous links to this that this did to the first, so we end up with a Twilight Zone anthology vibe – but more as shorthand for showing how she has come out of her experience (really trying to avoid the word ‘journey’ here), especially when contrasted to her earlier speech about the parent in the supermarket. Might be a bit pat, but hey it’s a Hollywood blockbuster, whaddya expect?
It’s a much more interesting movie than your average Hollywood blockbuster, basically a chamber piece (could have been a stage production) with a few nice fx at the end. What I found unsatisfactory was the makers didn’t seem to know exactly what to do with the space monsters from outer space. They knew it was a Cloverfield movie, so there had to be space monsters from outer space, but they seemed a bit aimless and ineffective as far as space monsters from outer space go. All they did was confirm that the earth really had been invaded by space monsters from outer space. Which we sort of suspected.
There was a beautiful shot right at the end when the space ship is suddenly silhouetted by sheet lightning. That would have done the job for me on its own. No slithery car-bothering aliens, no radio announcements (clunky exposition, like the first few minutes – just explaining what’s happened), with her back on the road like she was at the start … but … oo-er!