If the scenario of 10 Cloverfield Lane was filmed with the emotional sensibility of The Road. Opens with the Joel Edgerton family (with Sarah and teenage Travis) murdering and burying grandpa, who has become infected with whatever killed the world, and only gets darker from there. Soon the Chris Abbot family (with Riley Keough and a young kid) shows up, and after a few days of Joel being extremely suspicious, they’re allowed to move in. But paranoia and infection follow, and the Abbots are evicted and killed.
It was sold as a horror movie (according to Indiewire, Black Phillip even has a cameo), but it’s a particularly grim sort of postapocalyptic thriller… effective, but somehow I didn’t go for it – too much grim hopelessness, not enough Take Shelter mystery/wonder – and it somewhat reduces my desire to catch up with Krisha. It’s not a bland genre exercise, tho – interesting ideas within.
Shults:
The ultimate unknown is death — I think that’s all over the movie. But there are worse things. And there’s a line you can cross that’s too far, and it breaks things, and if we keep functioning like this, and if we keep going in these cycles, we’re going to destroy ourselves. It’s inevitable. We need to take a step back. Losing our humanity is going to be a lot worse.
M. Halperin:
Travis’ sickness only appears after he’s seen his mother and father kill an entire family — mother, father, and child. For all we know, the disease could itself be a function of metaphor, appearing only after a character has been so fervently immersed in the deterioration of human structures. Indeed, Travis has watched as his parents, his creators and fervent shelterers, have themselves become the nightmares. (Quite literally: throughout the movie, Travis’ more surreal nightmares are shot in a different aspect ratio, and set to a different score. This brutally realistic scene, however, also occurs with these subtle flourishes.) Is his retching after this scene, and the coughing of blood, representative of a revulsion with the very stuff with which we’re made? Sure, he’s pretty undeniably sick, but the sickness is also a literal purging of blood — which metaphorically speaks to a guttural, uncontrollable desire to purge oneself of family, of an inheritance of violence.