Monday at the Movies - October 31, 2016

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” Today’s Halloween, so we’ve got a very scary feature on tap for you.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) – For a film released back in March, there’s something suitable about me finally getting around to it in October. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a quiet creepy success, perfect for an after-midnight movie with all the lights out. Like its titular predecessor from 2008, 10 Cloverfield Lane is a bit of a mystery box, about whose plot the less said, the better. There’s a fine twist, though – where the original Cloverfield left no question about its monster movie affinity, 10 Cloverfield Lane invites us to wonder along with our protagonist Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) whether her captor (John Goodman) is telling the truth that the world has been unlivably ravaged by forces unknown. Director Dan Trachtenberg plays up the claustrophobic aspect of the bunker prison, which might actually be Michelle’s salvation. Winstead is suitable as the damsel in quasi-distress, an unsurprisingly competent hand at the panicked till. But it’s Goodman’s show through and through. I’m a big fan of movies like this, which give master craftsmen a chance to play a role that is truly terrifying, and Goodman plays it perfectly. At turns, he’s the true monster of the film, a horrifying abductor whose mouth-breathing portends a kind of supernatural terror; in other moments, though, he’s surprisingly sensitive and paternalistic, suggesting he might not be all bad – misguided, perhaps, but well-intentioned. Of course, the film never cops out and does address its central questions, and sooner than you’d expect, too, leading to a final act that is divinely unpredictable. With the recent news that there’s more to come from the Cloverfield brand, 10 Cloverfield Lane doesn’t need to take me captive.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!