A woman packs her bags, leaves a house key and engagement ring behind, and sets out to an unknown destination. While on the way a man named Ben calls her, he begs her to come back, “This isn’t going to solve anything,” he begs. Distracted by the phone call, she loses control of her car and the screen blackens.

The woman wakes up in a windowless room, tied to a mattress on the floor with a brace on her injured leg. A man walks in carrying a tray of food. The man explains to the woman that they are in his survivalist bunker under his farmhouse; he says that there has been attack above and that they’ll need to stay in the bunker until everything dies down. As he leaves, he looks behind him and tells the woman, “By the way, my name is Howard.”

“10 Cloverfield Lane,” Dan Trachtenberg’s psychological thriller, sets itself in an apparent post-apocalyptic, underground bunker under a farmhouse. The main character, Michelle, runs away from her fiancé and is involved in a car accident. She is saved by a man named Howard, who owns and built the bunker that he takes Michelle into. Howard tells her that a poisonous gas has been released upon the world, leaving all of humanity in ruins. Has Howard saved Michelle from a chemical fallout? Is Howard a psychopath that has taken Michelle hostage? It’s up to Michelle to figure out the truth and, if necessary, escape…

The movie is a low-budget indie film for fans of science fiction thrillers with a psychological basis around it. The film was created on a budget of just $15 million, which, in comparison to many of the different movie budgets in the last decade, is a very cheap budget.

The film constantly flips tones of coarse tensions to abrupt, soft humor. One moment, Howard has a ragefueled tantrum, and the very next scene, they are dancing and laughing along to Howard’s jukebox. It is intelligent to insert tension, as well as remove tension, at the times it’s necessary to the progression of the plot.

The film’s ending was a bit controversial; many people enjoy the ending, while many others didn’t care for the movie’s ending. The movie was required to stay mysterious throughout the entire time in order to make the ending a surprise. It’s for this reason that the script was required to stay as simple as it is, all the while giving the impression that there is something the audience isn’t being told. If you are a fan of sciencefiction films that keep you on the edge of your seat, making you constantly ask questions, this movie is the one for you. 9/10.