This is a continuation of the Cloverfield franchise. It stars John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and John Gallagher Jr. If you know anything about me, you know that John Goodman’s portrayal of Walter is on my Mount Rushmore of film characters, and I have been a fan of his since I first saw him in Roseanne and throughout the years, he continues to impress me with his range. This film showcases a lot of what he can bring to the table.
We first meet Michelle who ends up in a car accident. She wakes up in this basement, which turns out to be a bunker, and Howard has saved her. She is very suspicious of him as he has her chained up, but he has also tended to her wounds, kept her fed, and more importantly, kept her safe. She wants to be set free, but he explains to her that something happened to the air, and everything is fucked outside, and that he basically saved her life and Emmett’s. Emmett lived nearby and knew about Howard’s bunker and when the explosion happened, or shit went down, Emmett fought to get into Howard’s place. Howard has also lost his daughter, Megan, prior to all of this stuff going down and he refers to her a lot. Howard has a very quick temper, and he served in the military.
The questions that we must ask is whether Howard is in fact crazy. He did after all cause her car accident. Did this stuff really happen, or is Emmett just a tad slow in the head. Michelle continues to find things that lend credence to her suspicions while there are time when Howard seems to legitimately be telling the truth. So you are kept in suspense throughout trying to figure out the truth.
Personally, I think Howard was a 90% decent dude. He had his rules, but he ran a tight ship and kept them alive. But the uncertainty and suspicion never allowed them to fully trust him, despite the evidence of seeing a lady dying outside, looking like she had some bad disease and was begging to come inside. I won’t spoil the ending, but it really is a well done and suspenseful film. Hell, even if you know what’s coming, because there were only so many outcomes, and everybody always says that they knew the ending before it happened to try to sound smart, which is absurd, but it happens. It’s like, yes, there are always going to be people who guess something right, but to out and out say 30 minutes in, this is exactly how it plays out, people rarely get it right if the movie is well done, like say The Usual Suspects or Suicide Kings. I can say that my one time that I easily knew the twist was with The Sixth Sense, and yet my buddies all were in agreement, so not much of a twist in my opinion.
The last 15 minutes is really well done to give you more questions. The acting was top notch here, everything looked good. This is the kind of film that really deserved to be a theatrical release.
Rating – 7.0 I thought really highly of this one, and I know other people thought it was garbage. To each their own, but those people are wrong. HA!
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