Introduction of the movie
“10 Cloverfield Lane” is an American Psychological-thriller movie, which was released in the year 2016. It was directed by Dan Trachtenberg who got a Director’s guild of America Award for this movie. This movie featured Mary Elizabeth Winstead playing Michelle, John Goodman as Howard and John Gallagher Jr as Emmett.
The movie opens up with a woman Michelle, packing her clothes in a hurry, putting them into a suitcase, and about the leave the home. She picks up her phone and sends a voice message to someone, and leaves the room with the keys and a ring behind.
Accident right at the start of the movie
Michelle drives away from the town, towards some rural area on a highway. A person named Ben, calls her on her mobile and she picks up the call, only to listen to the voice from the other side, but doesn’t reply back. Michelle hangs up the phone but he again calls, which distracts her for a while, and her car is hit by a truck. Her car takes a big hit and rolls many times before being stopped in a pit.
Michelle lands in an unknown place
Michelle wakes up to find herself in a closed room, with a needle and a saline drip attached to her arm. Michelle also finds her leg chained to a pipe on the wall, which she tries to break, but in vain.
At some distance, her belongings and her phone are kept in the empty and shabby-looking room, which is closed by an iron gate. She uses her saline pole nook to pull the phone towards her so that she can for help, but she notices that there is no signal.
Introduction of another person Howard
A person named Howard opens the door of the room and keeps the food there for her. Howard sets up the saline again and tells her that her body needs these fluids, as she was injured and blood lost. Howard also provides Michelle with the wooden crutches and tells her to train herself on those. Michelle pleads to him to set her free, and that her boyfriend will be coming for her along with the cops. Howard replies to Michelle that no one is coming for her, and leaves the room while providing her the keys to the locked chain tied to her leg.
After he leaves, Michelle carves out a sharp tip at the end of one of the crutches, so as to use it against Howard. She burns a cloth with the help of a match stick, lying in her bag which creates smoke in the room. When Howard enters the room after detecting the smoke in the room, Michelle attacks him with the sharp-edged crutch. However, Howard escapes unhurt and sedates her with an injection.
Howard tells her a weird and unbelievable truth
When she regains her conscience, Howard tells her that there has been an attack outside, and she can’t go on the surface as the air outside is unbreathable. Howard also tells her, that he is not sure whether it is a chemical or nuclear attack, but it will take time for the air outside to get clear again, which may take a year or two. Howard informs Michelle that he found her injured on the road and brought her in and thus saved her life.
After some time, Michelle hears music playing outside the room, and she goes outside to find who is there, using her crutches. She finds a man named Emmett, with bruises on his arm, who also tells her that the air outside has been contaminated and that he has been here for a couple of days. When Howard comes to them after seeing them talking, he tells Michelle that Emmett did this to himself while knocking over a shelf, which contained at least a week’s food.
Howard takes Michelle to the bathroom, but keeps a watch on her, and doesn’t allow her to close the door. He tells her to use shower curtains only for privacy since he does not trust her. Howard thinks that she may burn down the entire place, for she has tried to do so earlier also.
While preparing food, Howard keeps telling Michelle about Megan, and that she is not with them anymore. When Michelle hears some noise outside, Howard tells her that this is the sound of a generator. Michelle asks Howard if they can find someone outside for help, to which Howard replies, that there is no one left.
Howard also takes her to the airlock, to see herself, a glimpse of the outside area. She finds two badly mutilated pigs outside, and on being asked about them, Howard replies that it is the result of the contaminated air, with which they came into contact. However, she also notices a white Van, with red paint marks on the door. Michelle remembers that while she was driving, and Ben called, she noticed the same Van in her rear mirror, after which she met with an accident. Howard tells her that he keeps this door sealed all the time so that no air can come inside.
Michelle tries to adjust to the place
Back in Michelle’s room, Emmett is friendly, empathetic and soft-spoken to Michelle. He tells Michelle that he was hired by Howard, to build the bunker for years, as Howard used to talk about the eminent attack in the future, and which became a reality. Emmett says that he has seen the attack, which was accompanied by a red flash of light. About Howard, Emmett says he is from the Navy and was associated with some satellite work there. Emmett also reveals that it was during his bid to run inside from the attack, that he was injured in the arm.
But Michelle tells him that Howard has abducted her and she doesn’t believe Howard. After that Michelle gets used to the surroundings, and all the three sit together for dinner as a normal family does. However, Emmett talks in a flirty way while having food, and even after he is told to keep quiet by Howard, Michelle too joins Emmett in the same way. Howard gets angry about this and warns both of them to behave.
Michelle tries to run away from the place
Michelle is able to grab Howard’s keys from his pocket when he is not looking. On hearing a slight sound outside, Howard’s attention gets diverted, and Michelle smashes a bottle on his head. Running quickly towards the airlock, she opens the airlock which lies inside and reaches another airlock which is on the outside.
When she lies in between the two airlocks, Howards reaches there and warns her not to go outside.
Michelle sees a car approaching and suddenly a woman appears outside the door and begs to let her in. Her face is partially damaged, apparently from the skin infection. Howard shouts from inside of another airlock, to not let that woman in. When Michelle does not open the door, the woman starts to get violent and bangs her head on the door loudly. Michelle understands that there is something fishy outside and probably, Howard may be right about the chemical attack theory. She starts to calm down and think about this.
Howard appears to be empathetic and mellowed down
Howard comes to her room and tells her that he must confess that he was responsible for her accident. Howard tells Michelle, that when he came to know about the attack, he got panicked, and wanted to rush to this place for safety. Howard says it was during all this panic moment, that he hit her car from behind, but then says sorry to Michelle.
Howard provides Michelle with new clothes which belong to his daughter Megan. He even tells Michelle, to stitch his wound on his head, which had resulted from the impact of the bottle, and Michelle does the same. He also gives Michelle her belongings, which he had taken out from her car. There is a notebook too, on which there are certain rough designs scribbled on paper. On asking about these, Michelle tells Howard that she wanted to become a designer, and wanted to design clothes. Howard compliments her for that and says that this may probably be the reason, that she was so good with the stitches.
Howard shows Michelle his daughter’s picture and says that she was so much fond of reading books and magazines. Emmett and Michelle get friendlier and discuss things. Emmett tells Michelle that she could not have saved that woman anyways who wanted to get inside. So Michelle should not have any regrets about that.
Emmett and Michelle share their life experiences with each other
Emmett reveals how he got a chance to play sports for the university when he was just studying, but being apprehensive, he skipped the chance. He says that his life was confined to 40 miles in the town, and was afraid to leave. Likewise, Michelle highlights some incidents of the past, where she saw a little girl being hit by her dad at a hardware store. Michelle says that she was watching her dad hitting her, for not keeping pace with him while walking in the store.
Even though she wanted to help the girl, but did nothing and moved away from there. Michelle also throws light on her childhood, where her brother colin took all the beating for her from their dad, whenever their dad was angry. Michelle regrets, that she panics when the circumstances are not good, and always runs away from them, only to regret it later.
Meanwhile from then onwards, all three, Michelle, Howard and Emmett, gel together and start working, sharing jobs and playing with each other, to pass time in the bunker.
One day, they experience that the air filtration system has gone down. Howard directs Michelle to sneak through the vents and reach the filtration room to set it right since she is leaner and small enough to reach it. They have to do it fast since they can soon run out of fresh breathable air. Michelle does the same and is able to successfully set it right as per Howard’s directions.
The filtration room opens a new secret
However, Michelle notices a ladder in the filtration room, which leads to outside through a glass window. She climbs the ladder, and notices the word, HELP, scratched on the inside of the glass window, besides some trace of blood on the letters.
After climbing down the ladder, Michelle notices something unusual, which makes her think again. These are the same earrings, which Megan wore in the picture, that was shown to her by Howard. She discusses the same with Emmett and tells him that maybe Howard has killed Megan.
Michelle shows Emmett the picture of Megan, but Emmett informs her that she is not Megan, but a girl from his sister’s high school, whose name is Brittany. As per Emmett, this girl Brittany went missing for the last two years.
Michelle and Emmett decide to get away from the place
Both Michelle and Emmett, get a feeling that there is something wrong there, and they need to try and get out of that place, besides finding the truth. One day, Emmett secretly takes away the scissors from the kitchen, on the pretext of having a glass of water. He also tries to play with Howard’s mind, when he says that Michelle might have come close in contact with the air filtration unit, and thus may have passed on the contaminated air to the bathroom and her clothes.
Howard does exactly the same as they had expected. He throws away the shower curtains of the bathroom. Both Emmette and Michelle take the curtains to their room and start to construct a makeshift biohazard suit and a gas mask. However, Howard discovers it soon that his tools are missing, and thus takes out a barrel of perchloric acid, and threatens to dissolve them in it, if they don’t reveal what they were up to. Howard throws the tools into the acid, which gets dissolved into it within no time.
Howard shoots Emmett to the shock of Michelle
Emmett tries to save Michelle and confesses to Howard that he stole the tools so that he can make a weapon out of them. Emmett tells Howard, that he wanted to earn the same respect from Michelle, which she gives to Howard. However, Emmett admits that he was wrong, and he is sorry for all this. Howard tells Emmett that he accepts Emmett’s apology, but shoots Emmette in the head, to the shock of Michelle.
Michelle gathers herself with difficulty and again, is on the task of creating the biohazard suit and the mask, so that she can get out of there. One day, Howard catches her with the suit and is about to grab her, but she pushes him and closes the door and runs. Howard confronts her somehow, but she pushes the barrel of acid towards Howard, which causes Howard to slip, and fall with his face on the acid. Michelle runs towards the exit, while the acid spreads on the floor. The acid further reaches an electrical wire which is running with the current, and which causes the fire due to a short circuit.
Michelle is again confronted by Howard with his face half burnt, but Michelle pushes a shelf on him. Now when Howard is down, Michelle climbs towards the filtration room through the vents. Howard has managed to reach underneath there and attacks the vents with a sharp knife from below. Howard almost grabs Michelle, when she is about to reach the top, but she slams his burnt hand so hard, that it rips off.
Michelle is successful in getting out
Michelle is able to reach the filtration room, where she puts on the suit and the gas mask. The smoke starts to come out, as the fire is spreading fast below. She manages to break the lock from inside and takes a plunge outside. She tries to gather her composure while finding the surroundings quite calm and on noticing Howard’s truck, rushes towards it.
However, while exploring the truck from inside, she accidentally gets her suit torn apart, which gets stuck to something, which makes her very nervous because of the perceived radiation. She quickly repairs the suit with the tape, that she has with her. Michelle hears the chirping of the birds at some distance and then sees them flying. She takes out her mask and tries to breathe in the fresh air. Michelle then stands on the truck, to see things more clearly.
Michelle attacked by an alien flying object
She notices some flying object at some distance, which looks like a helicopter. Suddenly, the blasts from the bunker take place, and with a huge blast, the bunker is blown away into the air. The strange-looking flying object starts to move towards Michelle, which is actually an alien hovercraft. Then it drops something on the ground and moves away. Michell rushes into the truck, and frantically tries to find the keys from there, but is not able to find them.
Michelle notices the car from the mirror of the truck and tries to reach the car. However, as soon as she reaches there, the alarm starts off along with the flashing of the headlights. This scares Michelle and she runs to a nearby shed to hide. She notices some strange creature through the window, which gets attracted to the lights and the noise. The creature starts to lift the car and bangs it. Michelle notices the same woman, who is dead now in the shed, and so tries to find the car’s keys in her pockets.
The creature starts to bang on the shed, but in the meantime, Michelle finds the keys, by which she sets the alarm off. She tries to run towards a house, but the alien creature follows her. The hovercraft emerges from behind the house, and though the creature runs away, the hovercraft starts to spray some green gas while moving toward Michelle. She runs towards the truck, and wears her mask again, to be safe from the effects of the gas.
Michelle finishes the spacecraft
The strange creature-looking alien spacecraft, approaches her, and grabs the truck in the air with its tentacles, and takes it towards its mouth-shaped opening.
Michelle finds that there is a lighter, and a bottle of whisky in the truck. She tears some pages from a magazine kept there and makes a Molotov cocktail out of them. She lights the one end of the pages, and when the strange-looking alien spacecraft opens its mouth, she throws the burning bottle in its mouth. There is a huge explosion in its mouth, and the truck comes crashing down on the ground. The burning spacecraft also comes down and explodes.
Michelle runs towards the car and starts it with the keys, which she had already got earlier. She drives away from the place and puts on the radio of the car. The announcement says, that the military has taken back the southern seaboard, and adds that they need help from the volunteers, who have any medical training, or any combat expertise in Houston. It also says, anyone seeking refuge from the alien attacks, can head to Baton Rouge.
Michelle has decided that this time she will not run away from the situation and chooses to rush towards Houston and the movie ends there.
