10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)★★★★☆

Before I saw this, my brother told me not to go into this movie with the expectation that it’s a true Cloverfield sequel. He said that’s what he did (and he loves Cloverfield) and was a bit disappointed at the end of the movie. Or confused, at least.

And he’s right – it’s not really a sequel. Oh sure, you could call it that. It’s not impossible to believe that this movie takes place in the Cloverfield universe. It’s just…not really related to the original at all. But that said, it’s still a good movie.

Sure, I could just be saying that because I love John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and they were both great in this. But it was a genuinely entertaining movie. It was definitely more thriller than horror, but there were tense, scary moments just the same.

The pacing was excellent and the background music beautifully done. The fallout shelter the group was in provided the perfect creepy atmosphere to heighten the tension. There are some climactic moments that you just don’t see coming that had me at the edge of my seat watching this.

I’m a little torn on the ending, though. The last five minutes or so in particular. I guess that’s where they really wanted to tie it back to the original movie, and I guess I don’t really have a suggestion for how it could have been improved, but it just felt kind of boring to me. It wasn’t like I felt a lack of closure or like there was a lot of tension built up and not released…in fact, the payoff just before the last few minutes is extremely satisfying. But something about the ending just didn’t land for me.

Anyway, I liked this movie. It’s not too scary and with its PG-13 rating it’s not too graphic, either. I’d recommend this one pretty broadly.