Not to start shit but Cloverfield Lane was a masterpiece
It’s true and you should say it
I love 10 Cloverfield Lane so dearly and I think it’s because it’s a straight-up survivor narrative of the kind you so rarely get to see. Howard’s abuse of Michelle (who’s already survived abuse from her father) isn’t sexual, but it’s terrifying in another sort of way. He wants to control her and keep her trapped with him as his innocent “princess” forever, he doesn’t even see her as a woman but as a child or worse, a thing. He exerts his power over her by constantly reminding her that her only option is to co-operate him at all times, because the outside world is dangerous.
And he’s right…about the second part. Once Michelle kills Howard, using nothing but her own smarts, she finds the outside world is incredibly, unfathomably dangerous. Except that that isn’t the end of the story, and Michelle isn’t a child or Howard’s helpless princess. She defeats the aliens easily, in the sort of move a man could pull off ten times in an action movie but it’s apparently weird when a woman does it, and hits the road to join the alien resistance. Because hey! Turns out that that particular “women are more at risk than men, so they should submit to man’s authority for their own good” bit of patriarchal bullshit is, well, bullshit.
Michelle’s character arc is also really great! When she talks about her childhood abuse, she explains how she once saw a father in a store physically abusing his daughter the same way her father abused her, but she was too scared to confront him and ran away. But by the end of the movie, having survived so much, she’s not afraid anymore. Given the choice via the radio to either seek sanctuary or join the resistance, she makes the decision to help others and utilize her considerable skills in the best way. There’s a massive alien spaceship in the sky as she heads off, but you suspect she has it well in hand.
God it’s such a good movie, with such a great heroine, the fact that it’s so underrated is criminal.
