Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has decided to leave her partner. Driving at night in the middle of the countryside, she collides with another car and is run off the road. When she awakes, she is receiving treatment but is chained to the wall and appears to be in a cell. In fact, she is in a bunker set up by Howard (John Goodman) who tells her that some unknown catastrophe / attack has happened and the air is infected. The only other person there is Emmett (John Gallagher Jr) who persuaded Howard to let him enter. Is Howard telling the truth or has he imprisoned them for some nefarious reason?
After the opening sequence most of the action takes place in the bunker. The film does not become boring at any point due to three things. The smooth handling of the material by director Dan Trachtenberg; a twisty script by Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken, and Damien Chazelle – I found myself changing my viewpoint a number of times; and excellent performances by all three actors.
The latter is predictable, as they are all fine performers. Goodman does not often play such a sinister character, but he does it well and Winstead is the pick of the three. She gets to show her action chops – that we knew she had from the underrated The Thing in 2011 – as the film reaches its climax.
In fact, the only major failing is the title, as the linking of the movie to the original Cloverfield story does gives spoilers as to what is going to happen.
Rating: 8 out of 10