10 Cloverfield Lane - Dan Trachtenberg

10 Cloverfield Lane is a loud movie in a small body. It’s not loud like a large-scale action movie, and it’s loud in ways most confined psychological thrillers aren’t. It uses loud noises in small spaces to create almost overbearing tension, and then keeps poking at that tension with every bang, slam, crack, and crash. It’s like having a balloon next to your ear while someone stabs at it with a plastic knife: you flinch every time and you know it’s eventually going to pop. Not every loud noise in the movie makes you jump – though many do (I jumped enough at one point that I felt embarrassed) – but each one adds to the claustrophobic pressure until you’re stressed and strained and ready to burst.

The movie starts with a bang – a really loud one. A woman, we later learn is named Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), leaves her house in a hurry but soon gets into a brutal car accident in the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere. It’s one of the loudest – and most shocking – car accidents I’ve seen on film. It’s shot only from inside the car – it’s the first of many moments of claustrophobic chaos and you feel like flinching to keep from hitting your head against your seat. The director (first timer Dan Trachtenberg) uses it to frame the credits in quick and silent cutaways from the crash. Quiet and loud, like the movie itself.

Michelle wakes to find herself chained to a wall with an IV in her arm in a drab room in a bunker. And this tension between good (the IV) and bad (the chain) sets up the tension of the whole movie. She soon meets Howard (John Goodman) who tells her he saved her – and is keeping her safe – from the outside world, which has been affected by a widespread chemical attack. Michelle soon meets Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) who helped build the bunker and injured himself trying to get in. But the bunker – and the movie – belongs to Goodman’s Howard.

With a name that includes the word Cloverfield you know what to expect. 2008’s Cloverfield was a giant monster movie shot on handheld video camera. 10 Cloverfield Lane isn’t a sequel, but you know going in that the two are somehow related. And so it’s a testament to Cloverfield Lane that it manages to squeeze in so much tension and mystery even with those expectations. It achieves that mostly because of John Goodman. He plays Howard with incredible subtlety and precision. You spend the movie with Michelle thinking he’s probably crazy, but then maybe he was right all along, but then maybe he’s not what he seems, but then maybe he’s just a simple kook whose preparations paid off, but then... He’s terrifying one moment and sympathetic the next – equal parts Satan and Santa Clause.

There is already talk about Goodman’s Oscar candidacy. There’s nothing wrong with that, as Oscar season theoretically runs all year, though it’s usually heavily back-loaded in fall and winter. But there are a few performances and movies early in the year that stand out until nomination time. 10 Cloverfield Lane has a lot in common with another tense, sci-fi chamber piece thriller released early last year that ended up on many year-end top movies lists (and won an Oscar): Ex Machina was praised for its unique vision and the excellent performances of Oscar Isaac and Alicia Vikander. 10 Cloverfield Lane could be this year’s Ex Machina. Goodman is not alone in his greatness, as Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Michelle continues the trend from last year of strong and tough female leading roles.

There are a few acts in this movie and one of them is more connected to Cloverfield than the others. That one will likely divide people. But the movie’s tagline makes it work: “Monsters Come in Many Forms”.