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I
should say right now that this film really does benefit from
following Schwarzenegger's guidelines for when starting a second
family: the less anybody knows the better. There's no way I can
waffle on for another few paragraphs without giving too much away, so
if you've not seen the film yet then I do hope that you enjoyed my
story about having the runs but it's time for you to leave now. As
for the rest of you who have hopefully seen the film then I'm sure
you'll now be aware of the plot. After crashing her car, Mary
Elizabeth Winstead wakes up in John Goodman's snug little basement of
nuttiness and is told that the world is fucked. Although based on how
fucking huge John Goodman is here, I think if I were her I'd just
assume that he's found a new way to spend the rest of his life
stuffing his face underground like a fat fucking badger and decided
to drag her along for some company. His story seems to be
corroborated however by a third bunker dweller, John Gallagher Jr,
who recites some of the theories that Goodman has told him as to
what's going on outside. There's been an attack that could be nuclear or
chemical and has been orchestrated by Russia, Korea, or Martians.
Honestly it might sound far fetched, but I find that entire explanation
much more believable than the fact that Goodman has managed to resist
enough food to stockpile supplies for them to live off.
As
well as wondering what kind of surprise this movie would be however,
the other question that we all wondered was in how it would connect
to the original 2008 film. Initially assuming this new one to be a
sequel, we were then told that 10 Cloverfield Lane was
actually more of a 'blood relative' to the original than a direct
continuation. And by 'blood relative' I think we all know that that's
movie slang for 'cash in' than it is anything else. Having now
seen this new film, I have to say that is also very definitely
the case with the two Cloverfield's
having about as much in common with each other as Mother Teresa does
to Ron Jeremy's dick. Both films seem to take place in two
independent worlds, stylistically they're completely different, they
have two distinct tones, a separate cast, and a new director. I mean
at the end of the day I'm also a blood relative of my Mum's sister but
we have different names and unless I suddenly pop eleven children out
of my genitals to avoid getting a job, it's not like we're in any way
similar. The script was originally entitled The Cellar and
it was only mid-way through production that re-writes occurred to
attempt to justify its place in a franchise. Even the cast didn't
have a clue that they were making a Cloverfield film
until a few days before the trailer went online. Although to be fair
if I was a Hollywood bigwig, I'd always avoid telling actors that
they're actually part of a major franchise just to keep there pay-cheques
as low as possible. At the end of the day, films are expensive to
make, catering doesn't work for free, and your cast includes John
fucking Goodman.
However
if we now start to take the idea of a Cloverfield film
as being an anthology, a series of independent stories with an
element of sci-fi and horror, then that's actually kind of exciting.
If it works then somebody's basically come up with a way of tricking
the sheep-like and moronic public into seeing actual original movies without
even realising it. John Carpenter actually tried to do
something similar with Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch before
seeing the un-justly crappy returns and resorted to panic-buying his
William Shatner masks for the fourth instalment. Plus at the end of
the day is there really anything that new that you could really do
for a proper sequel to the first movie? I mean, who doesn't like porn,
but I'm not just going to just watch the same film from a different
angle?! Unless of course that angle focuses less on the guys
fucking deformed monster-cock. Considering the lack of male
sex-worker knob shots in the first Cloverfield, I
feel that the only change they could make there would be to add more
to it and who really wants that? In which case I'm completely up for
the idea of a kind of cinematic version of The Twilight
Zone but minus the failed
stunts, decapitations, and genuine child deaths that plagued that
actual cinematic version of The Twilight Zone.
Ironically
and beyond its concept as part of a franchise, 10 Cloverfield Lane
does actually feel like a contemporary take on a movie length
adaptation of what could be an episode of The Twilight Zone.
It's mostly set in the one location, deals with the same mix of
genres, and also happens to have some degree of political subtext to it.
Cloverfield came out in 2008 when Bush was about to leave the
White House and obviously played off our post-9/11 fears. In case you
missed them, it was the 'unseen enemy' coupled with all of those massive
skyscrapers being knocked the fuck down. This new film has come out
as Obama is about to leave office, and in a year in which Donald Trump
is attempting to enter it. As such, this film deals with our fear of
having a stupid fat bully lock us up behind his walls to protect us
from an "outside fear" that may or may not exist. Interestingly though,
the film is ambiguous enough that whatever your political views
happen to be is probably what you'll see the story as justifying. You could view Goodman's character as the lesser of two evils
with his brutal tactics being essential to survival, or you could see
him as a metaphor for the Nanny State, an authoritative figure that
oppressively forces everybody to do as they're told. In this case,
Winstead's character would represent the opposing libertarian that
would rather have the freedom to face the situation directly rather
than bury her head quite literally in the ground. Fuck it though, I'm
not American so Goodman's character just represented your average
boss to me. It doesn't matter how well you do a job as long as you're
prepared to be bollocked for doing it wrong regardless.
Speaking
of which, it should also be pointed out that although this is very
definitely Winstead's movie, and she is brilliant in it, the real show
stopping performance is from everybodies favourite eclipse, John
Goodman. Despite being clearly off his tits on madness, he manages to
Barton Fink his way through the movie by being endearingly
pathetic and yet intimidatingly bat-shit crazy. I mean this is a man
that's gone to the trouble of building a fallout bunker in case of
the apocalypse and has then fucked it up by including a game of
Monopoly in it. I've been close to my friends for years now and I've
banned us from playing that bastard game because we almost never made
it through the last time without need of a fucking councillor. I
swear to god that at one point one of my chums said to another “I'm
sure we can come to some sort of arrangement” with such a sense of
desperation in his voice that we all knew he was offering sexual
favours. Including that game in a bunker where everybody has to get
along is not the actions of a completely well man. At one point, the
group starts reminiscing about the things they wish they'd done
before being trapped to which Goodman is asked if he wishes he'd ever
been to Las Vegas. They then wonder why he gets mad without realising
that, as anybody that's seen that crappy Flintsones sequel will
know, that it's probably pretty fucking obvious that he's glad he
hasn't.
Goodman
however brings a lot of baggage to any role that he plays and I don't
just mean his love-handles. He's got to be one of the most likeable
actors out there and so even when he's clearly nuts, you kind of want
to believe him and do as he says because he's John Goodman. Oh and
I've only been making all of the fat jokes because they're easy to do
and he's not actually fat any more. If you Google pictures of him, then
like Vin Diesel's car franchise, he has quite literally lost a human's
worth of weight between filming this and its premier. I do genuinely
think he's great. That's not to say that the other two actors aren't
worthy of mentioning either however, as in all honesty everything
about this film is way better than it needed to be. Not only is it
genuinely thrilling but it's tense to the point that my arse had
clamped down on the cinema chair like a fucking bulldog clip. It
bears some similarities to 2011's brilliant Take Shelter and
as its opening Psycho-like fleeing scene suggests, there's
definitely an overall Hitchcockian vibe going on throughout too. I
mean, sure, it's only been a few months since Room came out but
I guess these kinds of things are like busses. You wait ages for one
film about a woman from the cast of Scott Pilgrim being
chained up in a threatening mans bunker under mysterious
circumstances and then suddenly two come along at once. But when
they're as good as this then who can complain?!
As
far as surprises go, 10 Cloverfield Lane is very definitely the
delicious meal over the following days birthing of a chocolate loaf.
I kind of think that calling it Cloverfield and being cryptic
as to its relationship with the original is more of a marketing ploy
than an artistic decision, however as cash-ins go I have to say
that I do think this has to be one of the few that's actually better
than the product that's coattails are being ridden. If the only way to get
more people into seeing this kind of smaller film and therefore
encouraging more to be made is to trick people into thinking they're
seeing something else then fuck it, I'm up for that. In which case I
look forward to re-releases of Transformers: The Crying Game, The
Fast And Furious: Shame, and The Lord Of The Rings: Brokeback
Mountain. Thanks for reading, motherfuckers, and see you next time.
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