10 Years Ago Today, an Amazing Sci-fi Sequel Completely Surpassed the Original Film

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On March 11, 2016, Dan Trachtenberg (Predator: Badlands) directed the sequel to Cloverfield and turned the found-footage horror movie into a slow-burning psychological horror movie. 10 Cloverfield Lane ended up as not only a better movie than the original blockbuster, but it also changed everything about the franchise.

10 Cloverfield Lane Changed Genres Completely From the Original Film

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Cloverfield hit theaters in 2008 and was a monster success for one big reason. The teasers and trailers showed nothing about what the movie was about, and the mystery made it just as exciting as anything released in that decade. When finally released, Cloverfield turned out to be a giant found-footage movie in the same vein as The Blair Witch Project, but one that had giant monsters attacking New York City. It was a big-budget found-footage movie on a scale like no other before it. It ended up making $172.4 million on a $25 million budget. The sequel took the entire world by surprise.

10 Cloverfield Lane wasn’t a sci-fi monster movie at all. It didn’t even have anything to do with the original movie’s plot until the surprising ending scenes. Instead, this was a psychological horror movie about three people in an underground bunker after something catastrophic had happened to the world. According to a man named Howard (John Goodman), the air outside has become uninhabitable, and they have to stay in the bunker to survive. When a young woman named Michelle wakes up after a car accident, she finds herself locked in with Howard and a young man named Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), and she doesn’t know what to believe.

Clearly, this was Howard taking Michelle captive in the bunker after the monster attack in Cloverfield, and he is honest about the dangers outside. However, it isn’t a toxic attack like he claimed, and he has taken her captive for other reasons. This is a smaller, personal horror movie about one man wanting to regain the family he lost and a woman wanting to escape and find her freedom, even if it means in a world that might be untenable. The only thing that links this to Cloverfield is the scene after she kills Howard and escapes, where the monsters from the first movie are overrunning the major cities.

While Cloverfield was a massive success, 10 Cloverfield Lane was the better movie, less a found-footage disaster movie and more a story about someone trying to survive in the apocalypse.

10 Cloverfield Lane Remains the Best of the Franchise

Image Courtesy of Paramount

What is interesting is that the best Cloverfield movie wasn’t even supposed to be one. 10 Cloverfield Lane originated as a spec script called The Cellar by Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken. It included nothing from Cloverfield at all and was just about the man holding the woman captive by claiming something bad had happened in the real world outside the cellar. The script was great, as the movie showed, but the ending with the monsters ended up tacked on to help sell it when released into theaters. The Cloverfield twist was never part of the original script.

That is why it remains ironic that 10 Cloverfield Lane is not only better than the original found-footage horror movie, but it is also the best film in the entire franchise. In 2018, a film called The Cloverfield Paradox hit Netflix, which operated as a second Cloverfield sequel. This one took place in space and saw the astronauts trying to solve Earth’s energy crisis when they had to find their way back home, as Earth seemed to disappear. Once again, this was a spec script (God Particle) that had nothing to do with Cloverfield, but ended up forced into a sequel. However, unlike 10 Cloverfield Lane, this ended up with negative reviews and didn’t match up to the previous sequel’s critical success.

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