J.J. Abrams has stretched the art of talking without saying anything to its breaking point in a new interview about 10 Cloverfield Lane with Fandango . Is 10 Cloverfield Lane a sequel to Cloverfield ? Is it a giant monster movie? Is Cloverfield now an ongoing anthology series? J.J. Abrams dances around like a boxer on these questions and more, alluding to 10 Cloverfield Lane without actually pulling back the curtain even a inch.
Is 10 Cloverfield Lane a sequel? No, but yes, but kinda.
“This movie is very purposefully not called Cloverfield 2, because it’s not Cloverfield 2,” Abrams said. “the association is clear and there are multiple connections – and there is a bigger idea at play for us with these movies and this connection."
Then why does it have Cloverfield in the title? Something something connections again.
“And the fun of it is that some of these connections – and there’s a lot of them – are not the kind of connections you might think. So if you’re approaching it as a literal sequel, you’ll be surprised to see what this movie is. But while it’s not what you might expect from a movie that has the name Cloverfield in it, I think you’ll find that you’ll understand the connection when you see the whole thing,” Abrams said.
But it’s a monster movie, right? That’s a giant monster thing behind the glowing house?
“The story of this movie – and it came to us originally as a spec that was very different in a lot of ways and an unrelated thing altogether – is definitely about different kinds of monsters,” Abrams said. “And while the Cloverfield monster isn’t in this movie, there’s a new monster and there’s something else that happens… but I don’t want to ruin the ending.”
Does this mean “there’s a new monster” in the “giant lizard” sense, or is this one of those “humans are the real monster” scenarios?
If it’s not really a giant monster movie and not really the sequel to Cloverfield, should we start thinking of Cloverfield as an anthology label? Nope, Abrams can’t help you there either.
“A larger franchise or anthology would suggest multiple movies, and we’re just focusing on this, which is the second of two,” Abrams told Fandango. “But I will say that there is something larger at play that if we’re lucky enough to get to do I think could result in something pretty cool.”
For real plot details from 10 Cloverfield Lane it’s probably best to just stick with what’s in the trailer. Because when Abrams talks about the project, it all just sounds like slusho.
Remember Slusho? Though Cloverfield wound up as a found footage giant monster movie, Abrams did everything in his power to insinuate something much stranger and larger was going on, prominently featuring the mysterious Slusho in the Cloverfield viral marketing campaign. But when the movie came out, where was Slusho? It wound up being the soda company that Rob Hawkins was moving to Japan to work for, a meaningless detail in a character bio. Rob Hawkins was about as important to the appeal of Cloverfield as “Summer Camp Counselor #3” is to a Friday the 13th sequel.
Slusho should be remembered as a movie marketing gimmick that completely eschewed any connection to its movie. It was free-form plot teasing conducted entirely outside the film. 10 Cloverfield Lane looks like a lot of fun, but all this talk of how it connects to Cloverfield seems to have no center. It’s Slusho all over again.
We’ll know for sure on March 11, when 10 Cloverfield Lane comes out in theaters.
