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'10 Cloverfield Lane' is Good. Very Good.

10 Cloverfield Lane ?is a very good and highly unusual movie that I can't say much about because it is so full of mysteries and twists and turns of plot and even shifts genre between mystery and horror that almost anything I say is a spoiler, including this opening sentence.

The central story is of Mary Elizabeth Winstead's imprisonment by John Goodman in an underground shelter designed for a years-long hideout without anybody even looking out windows or opening doors for fresh air. Goodman does not seem to be a villain, but his motives are dubiously explained, and he can hardly be considered normal. He doesn't seem to have the expectable designs on Winstead, and another motive is clearly suggested and somewhat supported, but we can't be sure of anything.

Except that he doesn't know what he is dealing with. There is another prisoner, John Gallagher, Jr., but Winstead is the problem one. She's smart, and tough, and patient enough to wait for her chance, and when it comes, she's ready and active and as brutal as circumstances require.

If Goodman is the most fascinating character, Winstead is the most admirable, and the only one we can fully understand, a real heroine with neither superpowers nor the temperamental flaws of the Maureen O'Hara or the teenage-drama-queen type.

The creators of 10 Cloverfield Lane are interested in mystery, horror, and suspense, and they deliver all these so well that for the first time since the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I am looking forward to a sequel.