Yesterday morning, the internet exploded after hearing a new Cloverfield movie will be here in just two months! No one saw this coming and everyone is trying to find out how 10 Cloverfield Lane could possibly be connected to the just as strangely marketed 2008 horror film.
10 Cloverfield Lane has been under the codename Valencia up until now; the plot synopsis is pretty vague and sounds nothing like a Cloverfield sequel:
“After a car accident, a young woman comes to in an underground cellar, where most of the action takes place. She fears she has been abducted by a survivalist, who tells her he saved her life and that a chemical attack has left the outside world uninhabitable. Uncertain what to believe, she decides she must escape, whatever dangers she may face outside.”
Not to mention the movie appears to be set in some sort of bomb shelter instead of New York City and is missing the found footage aspect. So how in the world is this connected to the original Cloverfield?
Let’s start with the facts we are left with at the end of Cloverfield, spoilers obviously follow! At the end of Cloverfield, we see Hud get ripped apart by the monster, Beth and Rob take shelter from under a bridge in Central Park and then see bombs drop on top of the monster and the bridge that Beth and Rob are hiding under. During the credits of Cloverfield we hear a transmission, when played backwards it says “It’s still alive!” So the question is, what the hell happened to the monster? Was it captured? Did it escape? We have no idea.
After doing some digging, I found out there used to be a division at Paramount called Insurge. Insurge made movies like The Devil Inside with a budget of $5,000,000 or less, which is what the budget of Valencia was estimated to be. The division was closed down at some point and Valencia was left in development hell. Paramount swooped in and picked the movie back up. This is when people like J.J. Abrams and Dan Casey came in to connect this movie to the Cloverfield universe. Earlier last year, reshoots were done and they have been editing the film since they wrapped. It’s possible the budget has been increased since the film was resurrected; the movie is advertised as being shown in IMAX and you don’t film in IMAX unless you have some crazy action and effects in it.
Here is when things start to get a bit more confusing if they weren’t already, stick with me! My guess is at the end of the trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane is when she see’s the world outside and Nate comes to the door in the hazmat suit which brings shock to Michelle. Yes, you see her with Nate and Howard before this scene but they might have intentionally edited it to misdirect us. After all, she is seen in the same clothing once with a leg brace and again without. Once Howard decides to let Nate in they settle in for a little bit and Michelle asks about what happened, leading to Howard bringing out the barrel we see in the trailer. It is possible that one of the creatures from the Cloverfield monster is in the barrel, most likely dead, and he tells her a story about it and explains what happened. I have more theories on where the movie would go from there but I will keep those to myself for now as I don’t want to potentially spoil the film for others.
One last thing I want to touch on is the tagline for the movie: “Monsters come in many forms.” This could imply a ton of different things. The Cloverfield monster has evolved into something else, or there is some sort of new threat that is connected to the first movie, or the monster is John Goodman’s character, Howard.
I have much more I could go into, but I don’t want to share everything quite yet because I want to wait and see what may come true as we get closer to the film’s release. The mystery surrounding this movie is amazing and will hopefully pay off. I look forward to seeing how this whole thing plays out and seeing if the marketing for this film is as cool as its predecessor.
10 Cloverfield Lane releases March 11th, 2016 and stars John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and John Gallagher Jr. It will be the directorial debut of Dan Trachtenberg who made the short film Portal: No Escape.
Sources: The Box Office Theory fourms, Reddit, and SpecScout
