I’ve mentioned it before but I’ll mention it again: There was a time I was a fierce critic of movies.  Back then almost nothing was perfect and the imperfections I noted gnawed at me and made me hate films that I might otherwise enjoy.

Then came the change.

I suspect a part of the reason for the change was that I started writing and in doing so realized that when you’re creating a work rather than simply watching/reading it, you come to realize just how hard -indeed near impossible- it is to create something “perfect”.

So I went the other way and started giving movies and books and songs and artwork the benefit of the doubt, especially when a film was a low budget affair and it appeared (at least to my eyes), that the people making it were genuinely trying to create something good.

That’s not to say my “giving the benefit of the doubt” extends to liking bad movies.  Well intentioned as it was, I couldn’t watch the low budget yet ambitious Synchronicity to its end, though I could admire the fact that at least the makers of the film tried -but in my eyes failed- to create a thoughtful sci-fi work.

As mellow as I may have become, expectations work the other way as well.  When I see a big budgeted film produced by a very big Hollywood name and reviews for the film are for the most part great, I can’t help but go into the film expecting good things.  And when those “good things” don’t appear, it is possible my negative reactions are magnified.

I mentioned before how I bought Guardians of the Galaxy on BluRay and popped it into my player and expected good things.  Audiences and critics gobbled up the movie and it made a ton of money.  There are many who feel this is the best Marvel Comics film ever made.

Yet I hated, hated, hated the damn film.

After watching it I felt I was the victim in an old Allen Funt Candid Camera routine.  The routine I’m referring to involves a group of pranksters, one of whom tells a joke to all the others while the single “victim” listens in with the rest of the group.  At the conclusion of the wildly unfunny joke the pranksters uproariously laugh and we watch the “victim” of the prank as s/he frowns and wonders just what the hell was so funny about that horrid joke.  Sometimes, the “victim” actually laughs along with the group even though we know s/he’s doing so only to fit in with the rest of the group.  The joke sucked, after all.  And sometimes the victim doesn’t laugh and asks the others just what the hell was so funny about that.

In a long winded way that brings me to 10 Cloverfield Lane, the J. J. Abrams produced, small-cast-in-a-claustrophobic-setting suspense/terror film.

Filmed in secrecy before being suddenly released, 10 Cloverfield Lane (10CL from now on) brought a high level of interest among fans of 2008’s Cloverfield, a “found footage” monster movie also produced by J. J. Adrams.  Was the film a direct sequel?  Was it something else?

By now the cat’s out of the bag: If the film is a sequel to Cloverfield, its at best a “sideways” sequel even as the bulk of the movie may not suggest this be the case.

In fact, the first 3/4ths of the film could accurately be described as a mashup of the opening act of Psycho as well as the entirety of Misery.  The opening ten minutes or so of the film in particular tries (too hard, in my opinion) to evoke the tension of Janet Leigh’s character in Psycho as she runs away with stolen money.  Alas, by using the stolen money there was good reason to feel the tension.  In 10CL we have our lead, Michelle (well played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) leaving her fiance after a fight.  Hardly the thing of great tension.

Yet to the creator’s credit, they do evoke a certain amount of tension as she travels a dark road at night and winds up in a terrific accident.  When she awakens, she finds herself chained to a wall in a small concrete bunker.  She soon finds she’s inside a larger underground bunker.  There are two other people there with her, the odd and tempermental Howard (John Goodman, also pretty damn great in the film), who claims to have found Michelle’s crashed car and brought her to his underground bunker just as an “attack” happened, and the good-natured Emmett (John Gallagher Jr., also quite good), who nurses an injured arm and agrees that an attack has happened and that leaving the bunker is a death sentence.

The early parts of the film, despite the clear Hitchcock emulations, are pretty good and the dynamics between Michelle, Emmett, and Howard make for some great scenes.

Unfortunately, as the film plays out, my patience started to wear thin.  The characters, while interesting at first, lost me as time went along.  Frankly, I cared less and less for them and their situation and found them artifacts rather than “real” people.  By somewhere around the half-way point of the film I considered shutting it off.

But I kept at it, and was “rewarded” with a beyond silly -to me- conclusion that didn’t feel like it belonged in the film at all.

What’s most frustrating is that as in reading about the film’s original script, it was apparently not meant to tie into the Cloverfield “universe” at all and, I’m guessing here, may well have been more of a psychological drama.  I see that at the edges of this movie and can’t help but wonder if certain things were done instead of others, we might not have had a very tense and thoughtful horror film instead of one that ultimately squandered its decent setup.

While the critics generally loved 10CL, I can’t help but feel this movie was a wiff.  It could, indeed should have been far better than it was and that’s the greatest shame of it all.

More thoughts, and SPOILERS, after the trailer…

Still there?

Beware…

SPOILERS!!!!

As I said above, the movie is at its best when exploiting the tension between the characters in this relatively small bunker.  But that’s also where the film commits its bigger errors.

For example, given how small the bunker is, how do Michelle and Emmett manage to do as much as they do (I know I said I’d get into spoilers, but it doesn’t mean I’ll spoil everything) without Howard knowing?  How do they talk in secret without him hearing them?

Also, making it clear Emmett is a good guy came a little too quickly.  Wouldn’t it have been more intriguing if his nature had been kept more nebulous and Michelle couldn’t tell whether Emmett was better than Howard or vice versa?

There are also a good number of story contrivances that bothered me as well.  For example, Michelle seeing Howard’s truck and making a startling realization about it.  Did Howard have to park it the way he did and in such plain sight?  Wouldn’t he have parked it closer to the bunker’s entrance when he was last outside and had to carry Michelle in?

Also mighty coincidental, for the story, that when fairly early in the film Michelle makes a break and is just one door away from escaping the bunker but just happens to do so when facing evidence that things are not right outside.  Up to that point, she thought she was being held by two crazy people but upon seeing this evidence, realized they might be right.  However, what are the odds that she would try to escape exactly at the moment she could see this evidence?

Afterwards, you have Howard show (and tell) Michelle about freezing stuff and making metal brittle, which of course comes in mighty handy later in the film, as well as the fact that the air unit filter happens to malfunction (only a few days into their being in the bunker!) and that allows Michelle to see evidence of Howard’s possible dark side while also coincidentally finding a way out where she can escape without Howard following her.  And what about the fact that Michelle just happens to have a desire to design clothing and just happens to have to stitch Howard up which allows her to find a needle to use in making said special clothing…

Too much stuff is laid out and then becomes important later in the story.  These story contrivances effectively make Michelle the one “perfect” character to escape this situation.  Thank goodness she could sew, remembered freezing metal made it brittle, and was skinny enough to fit into a vent.

Otherwise, game over.

But there’s one other thing that, depending on your disposition, may break the movie down even further: The climactic last act.

To put it bluntly, that whole part just didn’t work for me.  Worse, given what came before it just felt…silly.  Hell, it was silly.  People lambast the movie Signs because the alien invaders -surprise surprise- were defeated by water.  In 10CL, we see the nasty alien invaders and Michelle manages to take out one of their mighty ships (or is it a big alien?)…with a single molotov cocktail?!?!

I mean…really?

The ship/alien (it is hard to tell) is that weak?

Mind you, I’m not even going to get into how awkward the change from bunker to outside world was handled.  We went from a Hitchcock Psycho/Misery-type movie into War of the Worlds…all in one cut!

Despite good acting and good direction, 10CL falls because of its silly and contrived story.  I really wish I could say it worked better for me, but despite some good stuff buried within, I cannot recommend it.