I don't want to give anything away about what this is about, etc, but I do want to say it's a damned good flick, IMO.

It's actually based on a script titled "The Cellar", and then reworked into a "Cloverfield sequel".  Actually, I've read several scripts with a very similar theme, but there's alot going on here that makes this stand alone, as well as stand out.

The performances from John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are awesome.  They totally carry the flick, and they damn better, as the vast majority is totally contained and even rather slow...or maybe even painfully slow.  But this is filled with a very creepy and intense vibe and you never know what's really going on...until you know, but even then, some things are left to the viewer's interpretations.

Made on a $5 Million budget, this is making alot of cash and is a huge financial and critical success.

Bring on more Cloverfield!!!!

Grade - B+

Good to hear because this is one that I've been looking forward to.

I really liked this movie! It really is better to go in knowing nothing at all, I wish it didn't even have 'Cloverfield' in the title (But $$$$).

I thought this was a great example of a movie that constantly raises the stakes and keeps the mystery alive. Casting was spot on, it's a hard movie to talk about without ruining the experience so I'll leave it at that. Oh, super into the opening credit sequence.

Just got back from this -- solid film.  I caught myself gripping the chair in a couple of places.

Quoted Text It really is better to go in knowing nothing at all

Yup.  Don't even read this.

IMO this would have made for a far stronger story without the whole Cloverfield tie-in.  Having no preconceptions puts you right there with the main character trying to figure it all out.  Tricky to get into it without giving anything away, but it seems like a purely commercial decision.  Not a good one IMO.    

Just got back from watching this and agree with everyone has said.  I added {Spoilers} to the title to emphasize my agreement that even reading the spoiler free reviews thus far is a bit of a spoiler in and of itself.  Not sure if I would have gone to see it if the title has been "The Cellar".  I purposefully didn't watch any reviews of this movie and went to see it only because of Goodman, Winstead and the word "Cloverfield" in the title.

- Don

Jeff, you've convinced me. Not alone, mind you; it's been well-reviewed by several of my go-to's. But at this point, I'm over the edge. I'll check it out.

Never saw Cloverfield. Never had the interest. John Goodman is always killer though, and Mary Elizabeth Windstead is one of the more underrated actors of her generation. Seems the film is related in name alone anyway.

Too bad I know the ending. Would've avoided spoilers if I cared more (and everyone hadn't said it sucks). Not sure I care enough at this point for it to be a problem though, so it works out.

This is a solid film.  Is it a spoiler to note that the third act is somewhat diminished by going pretty much were you expect it might go?  (Nevertheless, the action there is deftly handled.)

I saw this in a fairly full theater, and the shocks (and a few laughs) worked the crowd effectively.  The black woman in the back shouted "Oh, no!" at all the right times, and I did not really mind her doing so.  I doubt I would have laughed at a single, late expletive from Windstead in the comfort of my livingroom, but it proved quite funny in the theater.  All of this is by way of saying you could waste a theater ticket on something far worse than this.

They are clearly trying to build a franchise -- so I guess you could fault this as a franchise film if you must -- but at least they are taking a unique route with it.

And maybe that is their plan?  Finding really great genre scripts, then tweaking them to fit the Cloverfield universe?  I find that a very interesting model.    

Not 'what's inside the hatch?', this time - but 'what's outside?'

Just got back from watching this. Bit of a writing masterclass, this one. Very tense throughout, I'm not so convinced by the ending which had the feeling of being bolted on to bring it into the Cloverfield world, but the stuff inside the bunker was great.

From a script POV, a universal trick is to leave a mystery bubbling away in the background, something that makes the reader have no choice but to keep turning the pages until they find out the answer. Here, you have the obvious central mystery - what happened outside? - but also several little ones, which the writers drip-feed along the way to keep the suspense going. When Michelle wakes up, it's: where is she? Then Howard appears. Can we trust this guy. Then: what's Emmett's deal? Is he friend or foe? Then a new name is introduced: who is Megan? Was she here and now gone? And so on. Even tiny little ones like: 'what are they building?' (We're not shown the magazine.) Or 'what's inside the barrel?'

Also clever to resolve the question of 'is Howard telling the truth, did something actually happen to the outside world?' fairly early on. Many writers would have had the whole film be about Michelle trying to escape, but I was surprised and impressed when they got that out the way as the Break into Act Two. That he was proven right was a twist in itself, in a way, and one that means it's clear this isn't going to go where you thought it was going to go. Also clever to have the majority of the trailer be material from the opening third - as I was supposed to, I assumed Howard banging on the door saying 'No! Don't go outside!' would be the climax of the film. So when it happened 20 minutes in, I thought 'a-ha. Ol' J J has done it again, kept back the good stuff.' I have slight niggles about his ability to land a story - The Force Awakens is a bit ropey, plot-wise, and the less said about the final season of Lost the better - and I know he's a producer on this rather than writer or director, but still, you can sense his presence. He really knows how to market and keep the audience guessing.

Aside from the general skilled building and maintaining of suspense, there were lots of truly excellently crafted scenes. Two stood out to me as particularly well done: the clue game they play where Emmett almost blurts out the plan (does Howard know?) was great, totally going to steal a version of that. And also having them do the big confrontation / confession scene standing around the barrel of acid was a masterstroke, filled the scene with even more tension knowing that any moment now something very bad may happen. Also presumably resolves the question 'what happened to Megan?' Anyone who's watched Breaking Bad knew the answer to that from the moment we saw the barrel. Poor Megan. Or Brittany.

Which leads me on to character. As well as plenty of mystery, another key, often overlooked point is to write characters that actors will really want to play. I'm not at all surprised John Goodman signed on as Howard, as there's so much for an actor to work with there. His physical size in this enclosed space gives him an immediate level of threat, but there's more to it than that. His character balances on a knife-edge, the crazy glimpsed in fleeting moments where he loses control but our perception of him is allowed to evolve as the film progresses and the information is fed through. Though he eventually becomes an antagonist from which Michelle must escape, at least at the start his motivations and how we should feel about him isn't straightforward - he did save Michelle's life, and though he's clearly a bit off he's not obviously villainous. His character doesn't really arc, the timescale and limited interactions given the setting and number of characters don't really allow for that. Instead, what 'arcs' is our attitude towards him, as like Michelle we're constantly reappraising and updating our opinion of this guy as new information comes to light. Is he trustworthy? Is he telling the truth? Is he a threat? John Goodman is great, but he has a mysterious, complex character on the page to work with.

Many brilliant moments are scattered throughout. In his next appearance after shooting Emmett, Howard appears in a cleanly pressed shirt and clean-shaven. This smartening up, as he's been unkempt up until this point, says volumes more about his intentions towards Michelle than any creepy speech or physical gesture could have done. The new level of threat is left unspoken, but is so obviously there. Great writing, and a lesson I'll hang on to: abrupt change, from one scene to the next, can reflect a shift in dynamic and a character's mindset. Michelle's exploring of the air duct: a clear nod to well-known sequences in other filsm, perhaps most obviously Alien, so when she goes in there with just a flashlight we're waiting for something to happen, right up until it... doesn't. Like the rule of Chekhov's rifle, everything placed in the bunker serves a purpose, sometimes two. When Michelle first sees Howard's room, the shot of his Surviving Doomsday book adds to our evolving understanding of his character, but also provides her with the information that she needs to fashion the hazmat suit and gas mask. Similarly, the shower curtain is at first a joke - this is what Howard thinks of as privacy? - but later becomes a crucial part of their escape plan. The jigsaw they build, which turns out to have missing pieces, serves as a neat, smart analogy for what we're watching unfold: characters putting everything together, only realising as they near the end that they have crucial missing bits of information that means they can't see the whole picture.

And finally: the ending. Unfortunately, I do think that Act Three comes off the rails a bit. As people may know, this began life as a spec script called The Cellar which was bought by Paramount and put into development, with Whiplash's Damien Chazelle brought on to do a rewrite and originally direct, before Whiplash secured funding and he dropped out. As the process went on, Bad Robot realised this might work as a 'spiritual successor' to Cloverfield, and so the project transitioned to fit more naturally into that new role. The original - which is available online - ends with Michelle eventually escaping the bunker and driving to the outskirts of Chicago, where she finds the city in ruins and realises that Howard was right all along. But there are no aliens in the original. At all. Here, the final showdown sees Michelle go from resourceful but normal to Independence Day-style action hero, tossing Molotov cocktails into the hungry mouths of aliens, running around and generally being a badass. It's a climactic ending, but for me represents a bit of a betrayal of the carefully-managed tension that's led up to this point, and probably in part explains why the budget tripled from $5m to $15m somewhere along the road. It reminded me of a bit of the last third of the Danny Boyle film Sunshine: the filmmakers decided after 90 minutes of tense build-up what we needed was some ACTION, but the sudden change of gear comes across as a bit jarring. To me, at least. Others may disagree.

I don't know what would have worked better - perhaps nothing? Perhaps stick with the original ending, where Michelle drives to the outskirts of the city to realise that yes, this is big, and Howard wasn't wrong that she might have been safer down there? The last shot of the finished film sees her driving towards a radio broadcast requesting help, thereby resolving the flaw she self-identifies earlier on ('when things get hard I panic and run'). Which is an effective way to end - I worried they might kill her off which I personally find a really unsatisfying way to end a story, what's the point of having rooted for these characters for two hours if no-one survives? What's the message there, apart from nihilistic disappointment? - but I could have down without the slightly frantic 15 minutes that proceeded that. As if they'd have let her drive away anyway, as soon as that ship came down backup would have been straight on the scene, but she drives down normal, tarmac roads with no disturbance whatsoever.

So those are my thoughts. A big thumbs up for a very well put-together script, which ratchets up the tension and keeps you off-balance - how do I feel about these people? What's going to happen next? Lots of lessons I've taken away from it, and even if you didn't like the original Cloverfield I'd encourage everyone to take a look and possibly learn something about the craft.

Wasn't impressed. Okay though. I'd give it a 5 out of 10. Average.

Saw this opening weekend. I thought it was great even without the third act. I still don't get how alien ships tie in with the Cloverfield monster. But, one thing these kids are good at is building intrigue.

Goodman has always been intimidating to me. Far more than a chiseled bodybuilder. Just a hulk of a man with a deep, grizzled voice.

Winstead Was great as well. It doesn't answer all the questions it poses. Kind of reminiscent of Lost. But, it keeps the pace for a contained thriller. definitely a thumbs up from me.

James

I saw this recently and loved it for the most part. The third act when she turns into Ripley was a bit OTT but it was still far more enjoyable than Cloverfield.

Finally checked it out 1 week after seeing The Signal. Wasn't bad. Wasn't great. Someone earlier said a 5mil budget (more like 15mil.) probably more once the Bad Robot stamp hits the credits. But still not bad. I kinda enjoyed Signal more.
J. J. Does love his hatches in his shit, don't he?

I watched this a few weeks ago. I never watched Cloverfield and had no idea what it was about.

I really liked this, right up until the end. Honestly killed it for me, it almost seemed tacked on.

Excellent meat-and-potatoes genre flick. One of the better films this year, for sure. Great to see MEW leading a flick. Super underrated actress. Ending feels tacked on indeed, but didn't bother me much; story is over by that point, and they brought it home just fine.