By Gill Pringle
“They’re connected in tone, and spirit, and genre,” director, Dan Trachtenberg, tells FilmInk of his debut feature, 10 Cloverfield Lane, which has been enigmatically linked to the 2008 found-footage alien flick, Cloverfield. “The cool thing about Cloverfield is that it’s a familiar genre, but told in a really unique way. And similarly, we are in this similar genre, but we tell our story in a very unique way, which isn’t that same way. It’s a much more classical movie, but there are cool elements to it!”
The levels of obfuscation around 10 Cloverfield Lane are both unique and uniquely amusing, with the film seemingly coming out of nowhere, and bringing with it an alluring sense of mystery. Initially penned by Matthew Stuecken and Josh Campbell and titled The Cellar, the project eventually found its way to J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company. Once there, the powerhouse producer and director (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible III) pegged it as a potential “blood relative” to Cloverfield, which he had also produced. Promising young writer/director, Damien Chazelle, was brought in to rework the script (and allegedly weave in the Cloverfield connections) and direct, but jumped ship when he got the greenlight to direct Whiplash, the feature length version of one of his previous shorts, and an eventual critical darling and Oscar winner.
And that’s when Dan Trachtenberg (who’d directed a couple of impressive shorts) came on board. “I was sweating when I read it,” the director laughs. “I couldn’t believe all the turns that the story was taking, and by the end, it was like, ‘Oh my god, if I could make this movie!’ I eventually met with J.J and his producers, and they really liked my take on the material. I wanted to really ground this, and make it fun, and funny, amongst the intensity, which is what he wanted the movie to be as well.” A wire-tight tale of claustrophobia, mistrust, deception, and survival, 10 Cloverfield Lane stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Death Proof, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Alex Of Venice, Smashed) as Michelle, who wakes from a car accident to find herself in the basement bunker of a house belonging to John Goodman’s Howard Stambler, an eccentric survivalist who says that he’s saved her from a chemical attack that has left the Earth’s surface uninhabitable.
When it came to working with the prolific big and small screen veteran, John Goodman, Trachtenberg was pleasantly surprised. “John had such wonderful instincts, but he wanted more direction,” the filmmaker laughs. “He really wanted to be told. He allowed himself to explore every odd idea, and every object on the set was there and ready for him to grab and use. He does all of these odd, quirky things, which make it such a fascinating performance. His choices were all so cool, and we’d use all of them, very smartly. I never thought that I would be hands-on. I never wanted to, but I was shocked at how much he wanted me to be. I really loved reacting to the actors’ instincts and working off of that.”
Ironically, Trachtenberg saw John Goodman’s innate sense of sly comic timing as a means through which to tighten his cinematic thumbscrews even more grindingly on 10 Cloverfield Lane. “It was already a very intense movie, but I thought that it could be even more intense, if we had some laughs with these characters, and if we could also enjoy being down there in the bunker with them,” says Trachtenberg. “The joy of John Goodman in general, but also in this role, is that he can be very scary, but also hilarious. There’s something cool about enjoying being scared by someone, as opposed to just being scared. So that went into thinking about John for the role, and that has really paid out dividends with the movie now.”
Also raising the stock of 10 Cloverfield Lane is J.J. Abrams, who has exhibited something of a Midas Touch throughout his entire career. “J.J was shooting Star Wars: The Force Awakens when we were shooting this movie, but, much to my amazement, he was still watching all of our dailies,” Trachtenberg reveals. “He would write me these lovely emails like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe these inserts are so cool. What if you got this, or that?’ He was so in tune, even though it was from afar. He was also really encouraging, and he’d often really put the wind in our sails, and would encourage me to make the movie my own. He was able to be much more hands-on when Star Wars wrapped.”
Seemingly dropping out of nowhere, 10 Cloverfield Lane was finished and only two months out from release before anybody even knew about it. A J.J. Abrams-produced movie with no long-form internet buzz? How did they manage that? “We just didn’t talk about it,” Trachtenberg laughs. “It’s so rewarding, and so much fun! I remember as a kid, going to the movies and seeing a trailer for Jurassic Park, and going, ‘Oh my god, what is that movie?’ Hearing about a movie for the first time, with the trailer, was always so exciting. It’s great that we got to recapture that magic, and to give that magic back to people, announcing the movie, and then literally coming out in the next couple of months.”
10 Cloverfield Lane is released in cinemas on March 10.
