IGNORANCE ISN’T BLISS Being in the dark is much more scary than seeing the monster face-to-face

If I’m ever unlucky enough to be trapped in a bomb shelter with a stranger, things might be made more bearable if my companion was a good storyteller. That’s what 10 Cloverfield Lane feels like; it’s a claustrophobic thriller with a whip- smart script that never tips its hand too soon.

It deals that hand quickly, however. In the opening two minutes we watch as Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) packs a few things — including a bottle of Scotch — and heads out on the road, ignoring phoned pleas from her boyfriend to come back. Then, a car crash.

She awakes chained to the wall of a bare, cinder block cell. Her captor, Howard ( John Goodman), arrives to explain that he’s just saved her life twice — first by rescuing her from the crash, then by bringing her to his underground shelter when some sort of attack took place topside.

It’s a bit like the fate suffered by James Caan in Misery, but the attack scenario adds a twist of paranoia to the narrative cocktail. Is Howard lying? Is he deluded? Or is he correct? There are reasons to believe and reasons to disbelieve, both for Michelle and for viewers, who spend the whole of the movie as much in the dark as she is.

Of course, Howard could also be crazy; when he lists terrorists, Russians and Martians among the possible attackers, we sense a man teetering at the edge of the cliffs of insanity. Then again, this is what producer J. J. Abrams calls the “spiritual successor” to the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield, so maybe Howard is on to something. Or maybe he’s the monster. Whether he’s telling the truth is in some ways independent of whether he’s off his rocker.

Adding yet another layer to the confusion, and a perfectly underplayed hint of sexual tension, is the presence in the bunker of Emmett ( John Gallagher Jr.), who claims he broke his arm trying to get inside. But his description of what happened outside is so vague that Michelle thinks he might be mistaken too. It doesn’t help his credibility that he refers to Howard’s technical expertise as “satellite stuff.”

10 Cloverfield Lane is a mostly firsttimers’ film, written by Josh Campbell and Matthew Stuecken, with a rewrite by Damien Chazelle ( Whiplash) and direction by Dan Trachtenberg. But one senses the imprimatur of Abrams, who sometimes seems to be singlehandedly guiding the tiller of cinematic pop- culture, with the exception of the superhero subset.

Whoever is responsible for steering this trim little craft (its budget has been reported at a mere $5-million) is doing an excellent job of balancing tension and dark humour. The two collide most forcefully in Goodman’s character, who tells Michelle and Emmett that the shelter’s rickety kitchen table is “an heirloom” and to use coasters and placemats accordingly.

We also get a rundown of post-apocalyptic entertainment options: teen magazines and survival handbooks; cheesy jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces; a jukebox stocked with the greatest hits of 1959; movies on VHS; and Monopoly. It’s a wonder Michelle doesn’t beg Howard to kill her right away.

But the screenplay provides far superior diversions. Strange noises filter down from above, while Howard makes frequent references to the mysterious Meghan. And at one point Michelle is forced to crawl through a tiny ventilation shaft to repair their air filter. Because otherwise they’ll all die. Or will they?

It’s a nail-biting 105 minutes waiting for the answers, and you may find yourself reversing your opinions of the characters and their ultimate motivations more than once. There’s even a scene in which Michelle makes a discovery that causes her to mutter an exasperated: “Come on!” It’s a clever line, often heard from audience members when a movie delivers what it thinks is an unexpected twist. But she’s the only one saying it this time. ΩΩΩ ½