MovieChat Forums > 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) Discussion > The Ending is Terrible

The Ending is Terrible

posted 8 years ago by BITmixit
73 replies | jump to latest

First of all, what a film. Absolutely loved it up until the "twist" ending. The buildup was brilliant! My girlfriend who hates generic Hollywood films (she did Film at University) was genuinely on the edge of her seat during any of the scenes where tension is building and was very much on the side of "what the *beep* is going on?" Which made the film interesting and compelling. Along with John Goodmans acting the film was turning out to be a 9/10...then the ending came...what the *beep* was that ending all about.

It's literally like the writers sat down and went "What's going to happen when she goes outside? We can't have the Cloverfield monster appear as it'd be too obvious to Cloverfield fans and an attack by a foreign nation is too boring...what shall we do???....Aliens!"

Which was a terrible decision, they either should have stuck to the whole Cloverfield monster thing OR have her escape with Howard still alive and the underground bunker still intact. She escapes in her suit and see's the world turned to chaos due to the devastation left after the Nuclear Attack against Clovie, realises (through visual imagery) that her only current choice is to essentially become Howards weird "adoptive" child (he behaved more like a man who wanted a daughter rather than a sex slave) or sex slave. Then have Howard come back and begin to drag her in as the camera pans out showing just how much devastation the attack on Clovie caused, then another "roar" from Clovie to again give us the "is Clovie alive or dead" mystery. I very much wanted the end (especially after I saw the actual ending) to be a "This is what the world is now, accept it or die".

Instead we have *beep* aliens who have the ability to fly yet can't chase a slower, weaker female human down, have trouble against plastic bottles, display their weakest spot for the human to take advantage of & get tricked by a *beep* car alarm. Just more *beep* dumb aliens vs lucky human, seen it dozens of times...IT'S BORING. As soon as the aliens appear, you know she isn't going to die, you know there is going to be some freedom fighter movement against the aliens, you know all of this as soon as the movie confirms the threat.

Plus the after-scene was so *beep* She's driving along and has to make a decision between

Route A = Literally nothing
Route B = People that will help you but you might to help them &/or fight Aliens

Woah what a *beep* of a decision that one must have been...god I can tell why she has such difficulty making that decision.

It had a very "I Am Legend" quality ending to me and that was *beep* as well. It had the standard "nothing bad can happen to the protraganist so she won't die and there's a solution provided to all her problems" *beep*

Final result: 5/10 (You can skip the ending and pretend they all remain friends in the bunker, that'd be a better ending)

[–] AlexForrest 8 years ago

Agreed. Great film up until the last 10 minutes. John Goodman never fails to deliver.

[–] FairlyAnonymous 8 years ago

First things first:

This movie has nothing to do with Cloverfield.

Replace the word Cloverfield with "The Twilight Zone", and that is what you get.

Second, I liked the twist ending (mostly because it felt like The Twilight Zone) however, I do admit that it could've been done in a much smoother manner. For instance, when she is in the shed and the alien has run-off, she decides to immediately run out into the open. This doesn't seem very logical for someone who has been using logic this whole time. Then her blowing up the spaceship also seemed like a leap, so it definitely felt a bit off.
What was also odd about the ending is how fast the pacing is. The entire movie has been really slow and been about building tension, but then with the aliens it moves very very fast.

However, why I think the ending is good is because you know there has to be some truth in why they are in the bunker. The entire time the movie plays it 50/50. Is the air toxic? Is Howard actually completely evil? Is Emmett actually a bad guy (look up the theories on that one)?

But, logically the air has to be toxic and something big has to be going on, because if the movie is leading you in the direction that Howard is insane and just keeping them hostage, then you know it has to be the opposite. This also has a slightly sad twist because you realize that Howard was pretty much right in every instance as to what was going on (those aren't our aircraft above. Definitely foreign.)

[–] Fredrik-Hamper 8 years ago

I liked the ending a lot and the only thing that broke the immersion for me was the monster killing scene. That just seemed like something from a different movie and didn't fit. Keeping that thing in the sky as a mysterious threat would have been better, I think. It was eerie when it turned out to be more than a helicopter in the distance.

[–] FairlyAnonymous 8 years ago

I agree. Her taking out the alien ship was a huge jump in pace. She is running around, hiding from aliens, and then randomly decides to go out into the open. It was odd.

[–] tristanp25 8 years ago

It wasn't odd. Gotta pay attention to character development. Michelle was always panicking and running her whole life when situations confronted her. She explained this to Emmett. At the end (especially after Emmett is killed and she was just forced to watch him go down in a bloody mess), Michelle musters the courage to confront problems head on.

[–] FairlyAnonymous 8 years ago

That's true, but I feel like it is also unrealistic to run out in the open only seconds after being chased by an alien. She has no idea what technology they have, so being hidden is the smartest idea.

But yeah, I get your point.

[–] smoko 8 years ago

@FairlyAnonymous Yes, it was like a movie-length episode of The Twilight Zone.

What was also odd about the ending is how fast the pacing is.
I think they paced it fast because once Michelle got away from Howard, most of the tension of the movie is gone. Time to wrap up the movie.

And even with the fast pacing I still think the ending was too long. I would've been fine with everything being cut between seeing the alien and her driving off.

[–] m-vaskes 8 years ago

The monsters from Cloverfield were aliens too. 10CL is set during the same alien attack we see in the first movie, but at a different place. The filmmakers just didn't limit themselves to the same monsters all over again.

And the decision she makes in the end was to go where people can help her, or to go where she could help people. Which fits with the domestic abuse theme and her regret that she hadn't helped the little girl from her story when she could.

This being said, I did lower my score from 8/10 to 7/10 after seeing the ending, because I thought it wasn't executed very well, the action scenes weren't believable and I personally would have preferred a more bleak or open ending, perhaps she just seeing the aliens in the distance and catching a distress call on the radio after escaping the bunker, something similar in mood to the ending of Stephen King's novella "The Mist" (though the movie ending was awesome too).
But 10CL's ending just seemed a bit rushed, jumping so quickly from the bunker to the alien action scenes didn't work that well for me.

http://straycatgraphics.com/

[–] mgreen9715 8 years ago

Considering how bad the majority of films have been the last few years, this ending was actually decent and tied up loose ends.

The proposed ending of a cliffhanger is cliche and would have just been another of the thousand movies to end on one.

I thought the ending was fine and people just can't go without complaining.

[–] moviefool09 8 years ago

Off-the-wall idea, but I thought it would have been fascinating if she had gotten out and everything was normal (Howard screwing with her). Kind of a mind *beep*

"This is dead air, Barry....dead air."

[–] rocinante-421-313928 8 years ago

The twist was fine, but for me the movie had to end right after she says "Oh, come on". Had the movie ended right there, it would get a 10 from me.

[–] armhammer 8 years ago

I agree with much you say.

The alien that attacked her while in her car looked like nothing more than a huge slug with a single eye, perceiving a person as just a food source. That's supposed to be representative of a superior intelligence seriously threatening mankind ?

The aliens in The Arrival were much more convincing.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (52800787) 8 years ago

Who says the small alien was a member of an intelligent species? Obviously the aliens are trying to replace Earth's ecosystem with their own (the Cloverfield sea monster was likely planted there). That small alien maybe was the equivalent of a wolf. The intelligent alien species is piloting the spacecraft.

[–] jpozenel 8 years ago

At the end I think that she was just going to the place that had the most liquor stores. Bottles of liquor set on fire proved to be the secret weapon against the alien invaders. (I hope I didn't give anything away.)

[–] tallpall 8 years ago

lazy writing. it was pretty good up until that stupid ending sequence

[–] hnt_dnl 8 years ago

I only got through Cloverfield once and couldn't remember what the monster looked like, so I thought that WAS the monster near the end!

[–] sleeping_gorilla 8 years ago

Spoilers

They should have just done the reveal with the ship in the distance, and then run the credits. The extended fight was silly and hurt an otherwise good movie.

Thor 2-Attack of the Clones-The 5th Element the trifecta of bad movies.

[–] triplegrim 8 years ago

Without the fight against the aliens, there would be no character resolution for her. She decided to fight and not to run away in the end.