The Boy
A woman babysits a life size doll…….nothing odd there at all.
High Rise
JG Ballard’s social satire in a tower block with Tom Hiddleston
Risen
In 33AD a Roman soldier is tasked with finding the body of a recently crucified Jew…….this sounds familiar.
Rock the Casbah
Bill Murray as a rock star agent discovers a new singing talent and takes her to Afghanistan to be on a talent show.
10 Cloverfield Lane
2008 saw monster fest ‘Cloverfield’ hit the screens and make $160m worldwide as well as garner a whole host of complaints from weak stomached whingers in the audience moaning that the wobbly handheld camera effect made them feel sick. The film makers have taken on board their whining and this sort of a sequel / companion piece has perfectly steady shots throughout. The film , being a JJ Abrams production, has been shrouded in secrecy with audiences not even being given a hint that a follow up was being made until a trailer appeared a few weeks before its release. Hardly surprising when JJ Abrams managed to keep details of a far larger budgeted, ‘The Force Awakens’ under wraps until its release.
‘10 Cloverfield Lane’ starts with Michelle (Mary Eizabeth Winstead) tearfully packing her case and driving away from her home, and presumably marriage, only to find herself the victim of a terrible car accident and wakes to find herself chained to a radiator and a saline drip in her arm. But what would probably be the jump off point for any torture porn horror flick turns into something different when she finds that she’s been rescued from the accident by farmer (John Goodman) and looked after in his homebuilt underground bunker where he tells her that there’s been a worldwide chemical attack. Also sheltering in the bunker is Emmett (John Gallagher Jr) nursing a broken arm who wholly believes what he’s been told. Goodman is superb in the role as the farmer and we’re never quite sure whether he is a good Samaritan saving them from what he says is happening above ground or if he is full on Mad Jack McMad from Mad land. With the film almost entirely shot within the confines of the bunker it gets very claustrophobic especially when Michelle has to clamber through the air con ducts to repair the ventilation system and its the claustrophobic setting that makes Goodman’s explosive fury so terrifying. These are the sort of roles that Goodman excels at and we’re deliberately kept wondering about his motives, and frankly his sanity, about what is really going on outside. .
Essentially this is something of a three hand chamber piece which builds to a brilliantly tense climax and it would spoil it to reveal anything about any monsters but with such a title the film will carry an expectation which won’t disappoint.
