10 Ungrateful Feminist Lane: A Review
10 Cloverfield Lane starts by introducing us to Michelle, a woman in her late 20s who walks out on her boyfriend.
Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Windsor) stops at a gas station, where she looks suspiciously at a truck driver just minding his own business, then clutches her pocketbook until she's done filling her car and leaves.
While she's in the car, her boyfriend Ben calls her. She answers the phone but, despite Ben's pleading, she refuses to talk to him. Ben begs her to say something and says couples fight, it's no big deal, but Michelle cruelly hangs up on him. We don't know what Ben supposedly did, but we're lead to believe that he is a terrible person.
Next, Michelle is texting or something on her phone, and she loses control and crashes down an embankment. She is left there until a mysterious Good Samaritan helps her.
When Michelle wakes up, she immediately becomes panicked. It's clear that she's been rescued by a caring person -- her wounds are tended and bandaged, and she's even got an IV drip. Michelle reaches for the closest comfort item -- her phone. Then when she gets the cell phone the FIRST thing she does -- and I am not making this up -- is take a selfie. She holds the phone up high to shoot at a favorable angle and snaps photos of herself.
Meanwhile we hear someone coming downstairs and it's John Goodman. Instead of saying, "Hey John Goodman, thank you for being a Goodman Samaritan and tending to my wounds!" Michelle is immediately suspicious and thinks John is some sort of pervert who wants to sexually assault her. Already we can see a pattern here -- Michelle thinks everyone is out to kidnap and have sex with her, whether it's her boyfriend, the random truck driver at the gas station, or even John Goodman.
John Goodman spends a lot of time explaining to Michelle that aliens had invaded, and that the air outside wasn't safe because of fallout or chemical weapons. Michelle is lucky to be one of the only survivors, because John Goodman built a bunker and generously took her there when she was knocked out from the car crash.
Michelle also meets Eric, who confirms John Goodman's story.
Yet despite both men telling her the same story, and the evidence of two pigs that have been reduced to bacon by the fallout, Michelle still thinks John Goodman is lying and that he's some sort of perv who wants to keep her there forever living under a patriarchal regime.
Without provocation, Michelle hits John Goodman in the head with a beer bottle, then tries to escape...but just before she opens the hatch door, a zombie woman shows up and starts smashing her head against the glass.
Vindicated, John Goodman doesn't gloat or say "I told you so" to the ungrateful Michelle. He doesn't even hold it against her that she brutally attacked him with a beer bottle. Nope. All he does is ask for her help to sew up his wounds, and Michelle doesn't even want to do it.
After a montage showing us how Michelle, Eric and John Goodman are adjusting to their happy lives and playing Monopoly, the air filtration system breaks and Michelle has to crawl through a duct to a small room where she can restart the air system.
Once there, Michelle finds an earring. Suddenly she's like a CSI investigator, and she makes up this accusation that John Goodman killed and kidnapped girls. She manages to convince Eric that this is true, and the two of them plot to take out John Goodman and claim his bunker for themselves.
I will end my synopsis there and not give away the ending, but suffice to say it's at least another 45 minutes of paranoid delusions about how John Goodman is evil, and Michelle convincing herself that literally everyone else in the movie wants to kidnap her and have sex with her.
Not only is Michelle completely ungrateful to John Goodman, she doesn't even shed a tear for him or feel the slightest pang of guilt when it turns out he was RIGHT about the aliens. He was right all along, he was telling the truth all along, and all he wanted was to nurse her back to health and live as a happy family until the fallout passed.
10 Cloverfield Lane could easily be called 10 Ungrateful Feminist Lane. Over all though, it's good to see directors like JJ Abraham who refuse to give in to the extremist feminist, ultra-liberal thought cartel who insist that all men are somehow evil. For all its infuriating scenes of Michelle thinking the absolute worst of John Goodman, 10 Cloverfield Lane is a powerful story of vindication, showing us John Goodman was right all along.