Film / 10 Cloverfield Lane

10 Cloverfield Lane is a 2016 Psychological Thriller and surprise "blood relative" to the 2008 Found Footage Kaiju movie Cloverfield from Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot Productions. It stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, and John Gallagher Jr., and is directed by Dan Trachtenberg. It follows a woman who wakes up after a car crash, trapped in a bunker with two men who tell her that the outside has been affected by a chemical attack.

Character tropes go on to the Characters Sheet.

10 Cloverfield Lane contains examples of these tropes:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Michelle was abused by her father in her childhood, and her brother would stick up for her and protect her from him. She regrets not doing the same to another child who was being abused by her father in public once.
  • Howard can also be classified as this, albeit in a really twisted way. His actual daughter was taken away from him by his wife, presumably after a divorce, so he has kidnapped at least two women to serve as replacements for his daughter. Needless to say, he treats them less than well.
• Acid Pool: Howard owns one which he uses to resolve his problems with.
• Affectionate Pickpocket: A not-so-affectionate variant. Michelle provokes a face-to-face confrontation with Howard at dinner so she could swipe his keys.
• Air-Vent Passageway: One that works about as well as you'd expect in real life, given that it's extremely cramped. Michelle doesn't crawl through it so much as she inches her way into it.
• Alien Invasion: One of Howard's theories on what's happening on the surface, which turns out to be true.
• Alone with the Psycho: Emmett and Michelle with respect to Howard, with them disturbed by his Ambiguously Evil behavior. Becomes a traditional kind once Howard shoots Emmett in the head.
• Alternate Continuity: The production crew have stated that this film and Cloverfield do not share the same continuity, however, there are many Easter Eggs and similarities in tone that connect both films.
• Ambiguous Ending: In the final shot we see Michelle headed towards Houston to help fight the Alien Invasion, but the revelation of two alien air crafts patrolling the way put a big question mark behind the success of this undertaking.
• Ambiguous Situation: What has happened to force Howard to flee into the bunker isn't exactly known, although he has several theories. Until the film's final act, when Michelle finds herself in the middle of an alien planetary invasion.
• Ankle Drag: In the final act when Michelle escapes through the Air-Vent Passageway, Howard grabs the hazmat suit which Michelle dragged behind her. She manages to throw him off with a couple of kicks.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: Perchloric acid is not flammable (although it is dangerously corrosive).
• Attack Its Weak Point: At the end of the film, Michelle destroys the alien ship by throwing a Molotov cocktail into its "mouth".
• At the Crossroads: At the end of the film, Michelle has a choice to flee further north to Baton Rouge and try to hide from the aliens, or west towards Houston where she hears over the radio that the aliens are being driven back and combat and medical help are needed. She chooses to head to Houston.
• Bait-and-Switch Accusation: During the guessing game, Howard's descriptions "I'm always watching, I know what you're doing, I see what you're doing." makes it sound like he actually found Emmet and Michelle out, but it turns out to he was just describing Santa Claus. Though we cannot be sure if there was more to it, since it was just another case of an Ambiguous Situation.
• Bittersweet Ending: Howard is killed and Michelle escapes the bunker. However, Emmett is dead and there's an alien invasion taking place on the surface — one which we may be winning.
• Bookends:
  • The film opens with Michelle being injured in a car crash by Howard then waking up chained down in a room, injured in her head and leg, with a saline drip in her arm. It ends with Michelle locking Howard in her room, then using another liquid of his to injure him in the leg and head, then getting in a car crash as she tries to escape, then driving off.
  • The very beginning of the movie has Michelle running away from her biggest problem by driving away. At the end of the movie, she is shown making a decision to drive towards her biggest problem facing it head-on.
• Bottle Episode: Much of the movie takes place in an underground bunker, with only brief glimpses of the outside. That is, until the final act, when Michelle escapes.
• Bystander Syndrome: Michelle tells Emmett she regrets not intervening one time when she saw a little girl being abused by her father in public, similar to how she was abused by her father in her childhood. At the end of the film, she decides she done running away from or ignoring adversity, and instead confronts it (it of course being a damn alien invasion).
• The Cameo: Bradley Cooper is the voice of Michelle's fiancé, Ben.
• Character Development:
  • Michelle starts the movie running away from her fiancé after a nasty fight, and she later tells Emmett about how she's always running away from/ignoring problems, such as when she suffered Bystander Syndrome while watching a little girl be abused in a hardware store. At the end of the film, she decides to not run away to safety in Baton Rouge, but instead go to Houston and fight the Alien Invasion.
  • Emmett reveals that his fears have kept him from taking any action in life. He earned a track scholarship from Louisana Tech, but he was so intimidated by the thought of college that he never found the courage to leave home. In the end, he finds the strength to act, committing a Heroic Sacrifice to save Michelle's life.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • After waking up chained to a wall, Michelle uses her IV stand as a hook to get her belongings. She later uses it to fish the parts she needs for her clean-suit out of the garbage.
  • There's a closeup of the shower curtain when Michelle pulls it across. She later uses to make a Hazmat Suit.
  • The bottle of alcohol Michelle took from her apartment in the beginning of the film. She uses it in the film's final act to make a Molotov Cocktail and destroy an alien craft that had picked up the truck she was hiding in. Howard even reminds the audience of it partway through the movie, ruefully noting that he didn't have time to grab it as well.
• Chekhov's Lecture: Howard reminisces about using CO₂ to play practical jokes on his commanding officer in the Navy by using it to freeze and then break the lock off his bathroom door. Michelle breaks the lock on the hatch this way at the end.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Michelle mentions being an aspiring fashion designer early in the film. She stitches up Howard's head wound and her ability to make clothing comes in handy when she needs to construct a hazmat suit to leave the bunker with.
  • An In-Universe one at the end of the movie. The Distress Call asks for help from anyone with combat or medical experience. By this stage Michelle has both.
• City in a Bottle: The setting of much of the film. It's an Apocalypse Bunker type.
• Collapsing Lair: The bunker gets utterly trashed during Michelle and Howard's final showdown.
• Company Cross References: Michelle stops at a Kelvin gas station with her car in the beginning of the film.
• Confess to a Lesser Crime:
  • Howard comes clean to Michelle and admits he caused the accident that ran Michelle off the road. However, while Howard says it was because he was driving recklessly in a panic to get back to the bunker when he realized something was going on, Michelle still thinks he deliberately ran her off the road to kidnap and bring her back to the bunker. Ultimately, we never really find out.
  • Subverted when Emmet tries this only to get shot dead.
• Conversation Casualty: "I accept your apology." - Bang!
• Cosy Catastrophe: Played with but ultimately averted, after Howard and Emmett have informed Michelle of the situation on the surface and she has began bonding with Howard after stitching up a cut she caused him, it starts to seem as if it is going to go in this direction with even a Good-Times Montage to the song I Think We're Alone Now thrown in as the trio start to adapt to life in the bunker, at least until the air ventilation system needs to be fixed and Michelle discovers a padlocked skylight with a message Help scratched into it.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Howard turns out to have been telling the truth about aliens invading.
• Dangerous Key Fumble: There is a suspenseful moment when Michelle tries to escape with Howard's keys. She has to open three locks at the main gate which takes her long enough for Howard to catch up. She manages to escape at the last second, but not for long.
• Deadly Gas:
  • Howard is convinced the air is toxic, from either being weaponized or from fallout. He allows Michelle to go to the bunker's topside locked exit, where she can see through a window a pair of pig carcasses horribly mutilated and burned.
  • Not soon after, as Michelle makes her first escape attempt, a neighbor of Howard's pleads to be let in, also horribly burned.
  • Michelle later finds the air is not toxic, but the invasion forces do use poison gas as a weapon, which is the reason for the burns.
• Deathly Dies Irae: Composer Bear McCreary opens the horror movie with an understated chunk of "dies irae," creating a deathly mood.
• Distress Call:
  • When Michelle crawls through the ductwork to reset the air filtration system, she finds a message scratched into a door facing to the outside. She realizes it's from a girl Howard had earlier imprisoned in his bunker, that she'd scratched into the window with one of her earrings.
  • Michelle receives one through a car radio at the end of the film, calling for both medical and combat aid to Houston, which is still trying to repel an alien attack.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: As this reviewer points out, Howard follows the pattern of a domestic violence abuser.
• Dolled-Up Installment: The movie originally was a script called The Cellar, written by Josh Campbell & Matt Stuecken. Once Bad Robot (J.J. Abrams' production company) optioned the script, it was re-tooled into a 'spiritual successor' to Cloverfield. While it was in production, the film went by the name Valencia to keep its connection to Cloverfield a secret. The film's eventual name was unknown even to its stars at first. The big change is that, in the original script, Michelle escapes and drives towards Chicago, and finds a nuclear attack has taken place, rather than an alien invasion.
• Dysfunctional Family: Howard intends for him, Emmett, and Michelle to behave as a family unit. However, Howard is intent on having the 'family' conform to his rules.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • Despite his anger issues, Howard doesn't take it personally when Michelle stabs him with the sharpened end of her crutch, nor later on when she smashes a bottle on his head and tries to escape, nearly getting everyone killed. He even trusts her to stitch up his head wound.
  • Inverted big time with Emmett, who, after admitting to Howard about his plan to steal Howard's gun, not only gets his head blown off by Howard's gun, but his corpse gets dipped in the acid that Howard had threatened to dip him and Michelle into.
• Easter Egg:
  • While one can dissect the Viral Marketing campaigns to find all the connections, one in the film that is easy to spot is when Michelle reaches the area of the bunker with the filtration system's reset switch, and climbs out of the vent, she scatters some papers, of which one is an envelope addressed to Howard of which the return address is clearly seen as a Japanese company, his former employer, a subsidiary (Bold Futura) of the company (Tagruato) responsible for releasing the Cloverfield monster.
  • Additionally, the Kelvin gas station from Super 8 makes an appearance, with a neon Slusho! sign in the window.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • One of the first things we learn about Michelle, as she tries to escape, is that she's determined and resourceful.
  • Howard we meet as Michelle's strange captor, who seems threatening. This persists right up until Michelle finds out there really is something out there. Then he seems friendlier. Then we find out he's Faux Affably Evil.
  • We first hear Emmett screwing up offscreen; however, when we do meet him in person, he's charming and friendly.
• Evidence Dungeon: The air filtration room, where Michelle notices the "help" carving and a blood-stained earring.
• Exact Words: When grilling them about something going on, Howard threatens to dissolve Michelle and Emmett alive in the perchloric acid unless they confess. He never said he'd let the guilty party live, though, and after Emmett speaks up, Howard grants him a relatively painless death by headshot.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Howard is unshaven for most of the film until he murders Emmett. He's then clean-shaven, and even starts dressing nicer.
• Fanservice: In Michelle's first attempt to escape, the camera gives a shot of her stretching her whole body to reach her cellphone in just a tank top and panties, then a top-down shot as she stretches up trying to find a signal.
• Feed It a Bomb: How Michelle destroys the alien ship.
• Finale Title Drop: "10 Cloverfield" is the address of Howard's home. We learn this when Michelle knocks over the house's mailbox as she flees Howard's bunker after destroying the alien craft. (And it has a split-second appearance on an envelope in the air purification room).
• Finger-Twitching Revival: Howard sedates Michelle after her first assault on his life. Her coming to afterwards is preceded by a twitching of her hand in close-up.
• Fleeing for the Fallout Shelter:
  • Emmett saw the lights of the imminent apocalypse while on his way home from work and ran for Howard's fallout shelter, which he helped to build, breaking his arm in the process of fighting to get inside.
  • Howard claims that this also happened to him, and that he was speeding home to his shelter, hence why he crashed into Michelle and ended up taking her inside. The events of the movie, specifically Howard having had a previous victim before Michelle, more or less confirms it was a lie.
• Flying Cutlery Spaceship: The alien airships have a pointy shell.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The film's Tagline, "monsters come in many forms", foreshadows the two very different forms of monsters in the film: the human, non-supernatural monster played by John Goodman, and the alien, paranormal monsters that have invaded the surface.
  • Before Michelle arrived, Howard's bunker had an unused room with a lock on the outside. Why would he need such a room? It's later revealed that he'd abducted at least one girl and forced her to live in the bunker with him as his replacement daughter. He apparently built the extra room for this express purpose.
  • Howard gets really upset when Emmett so much as touches Michelle. What dad wants a cute boy anywhere near his daughter?
  • When Emmett nearly finishes his puzzle, he gets annoyed because there are pieces missing, jokingly mentioning that half of the cat's face looks "deformed". The same thing happens to Howard after he gets a face full of perchloric acid in the climax.
  • Emmett at one point says that even he sometimes doubts Howard's theories like one about space worms. But that's actually one of the things he was right about.
  • Michelle and Emmett watch a VHS cassette called Cannibal Airlines. At the end of the film, Michelle almost gets eaten by an aircraft. Behind the scenes, the cassette box is a fake film sent to the Bad Robot office by comedy writer Rob Schrab.
  • Perhaps the biggest one: Michelle tells Emmet about how her brother used to protect her from her abusive Father. Cue Emmett (her symbolic brother) dying as a result of taking the heat for Michelle, at the hands of Howard (her symbolic father)
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • When Howard confronts Michelle and Emmett with the barrel of acid, he is wearing earplugs. Unlike Michelle, he's not deafened by the gunshot in a confined space a few minutes later.
  • Howard's address appears on an envelope in the bunker.
• Freudian Trio:
  • Howard, skeptical and always wants to be in control (Superego).
  • Michelle, the one who frequently does what she wants and provokes Howard's authority (Id, bordering on Ego)
  • Emmett, mediating between the two (Ego, bordering on Id)
• Future Copter: The people in the bunker hear a definite aircraft flying overhead which sounds like a helicopter, but Howard insists that it doesn't sound like any US government helicopter. When Michelle finally escapes, she sees a strange vessel without rotor blades hovering over the field. When it turns in her direction to reveal multiple wing vanes and Combat Tentacles, she belatedly realizes that Howard was right after all.
• Genre Shift: From Found Footage Kaiju film to a character-driven Bottle Episode thriller, the shift from Cloverfield to its "blood relative" is pretty drastic. In-Universe, the movie shifts from character-driven Bottle Episode thriller to Alien Invasion sci-fi horror in the third act.
• Good-Times Montage: Set to "I Think We're Alone Now". After Michelle narrowly avoids letting in an infected woman, confirming Howard's claims about the danger outside, she and Emmett quickly settle in to life in the bunker and start to enjoy Howard's odd company. Then she finds out that she might have reason to be suspicious of Howard after all...
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • When Howard blows Emmett's brains out at point blank range, the camera shifts just slightly so that the victim is out of frame and the next shot shows blood stains on the wall. Averted a few minutes later when Michelle finds Emmett's remains dissolving in the acid.
  • When Michelle gives Howard a taste of his own acid, we see only the aftermath — the actual scarring is done as Howard lies face-down in the acid. The most explicit shot shows us what it does to an electrical cord.
• Hazmat Suit: A good deal of the plot revolves around creating a hazmat suit to survive the conditions in the outside world.
• Hell Is That Noise: An intense low-level sound passes over the bunker, shaking the concrete ceiling and walls. Once Michelle escapes, we realize it's likely caused by the alien patrol craft.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Howard gets burned by the same perchloric acid that he had dipped Emmett's corpse in and threatened to dip Michelle into.
• Hollywood Acid: While everything Howard says about the perchloric acid is true, the combustion would have produced deadly chlorine gas, which would likely have killed him and Michelle.
• Hope Spot:
  • Early on, when Michelle reaches the front door of the bunker with the help of Howard's keys, she notices a car outside with the headlights on and is totally excited. Then she sees the the car driver's face and realizes that the outside is not worth reaching after all.
  • When Michelle does escape to the outside world, she hears birdsong, realizes the air isn't poisoned after all, and happily takes off her mask. Then she sees the alien aircraft.
  • Howard is about to leave Michelle's room when a screw falls out of the vent where she hid her gas mask. Howard reaches into the air vent to find out why it's loose, but her improvised gas mask is hidden out of reach of his fingers. Then as he's about to leave, he sees part of her hazmat suit peeking out from under the mattress.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Played with. Up to the end, we don't exactly know what Howard was planning to do to Michelle, but this trope is heavily implied.
• Improvised Weapon:
  • Michelle makes a crude spear by sharpening one of her wooden crutches with a handcuff key. It doesn't work.
  • Michelle later tries to escape again, by distracting Howard, taking his keys, and trying to knock him out by smashing a soda bottle across his face. Actually, Michelle could've escaped, but the appearance of Howard's neighbor outside makes her back down.
  • Michelle later makes a Molotov Cocktail out of a bottle of scotch she'd taken from her and her fiancé Ben's apartment. It works.
• Informed Flaw: Played with. Michelle claims to be a coward who ran away from seeing a parent abuse a child and in the opening leaves her home and fiancé after a verbal fight. Yet when in actual physical danger, she is extremely courageous and proactive while keeping her wits about her.
• In Name Only: Besides the name, 10 Cloverfield Lane has practically no relation to Cloverfield, with the former being an isolated psychological thriller and the latter being a found footage monster movie. There isn't even any acknowledgement that the events of the first film happened at all.
• Instant Sedation: Howard sedates Michelle when she tries to escape the first time. It takes effect two seconds after the needle touches her skin.
• Ironic Echo: Michelle swiping off the incoming calls from her (ex) boyfriend in the car at the start contrast with the complete lack of signal in the bunker.
• Jump Scare: Plenty of them, starting with a car hitting Michelle's car.
• Key Under the Doormat: Averted by Michelle as the keys to the truck aren't under the sun visor or in the glovebox. They are on the dead owner, however.
• Lightning Reveal: As Michelle begins to drive towards Houston, a lightning flash reveals another, larger alien craft, patrolling the farmland near the road.
• Liquid Courage: Howard offers vodka to Michelle so she would be less hesitant to stitch him up.
• MacGyvering: Michelle makes an improvised hazmat suit from trash in the bunker, held together with duct tape.
• Minimalist Cast: Three cast members and Bradley Cooper's voice on the phone. Plus Howard's ill-fated neighbor and the voice on the radio at the end.
• Mistaken for Apocalypse: Michelle implies to Emmett that he has fallen for this trope after having listened to Howard's paranoid fantasies and then seen a few strange flashes of light that could be anything.
• Molotov Cocktail: Michelle is able to improvise one to take down an alien craft, using a bottle of scotch that she'd brought with her but Howard had left in his truck when he brought her down into the bunker.
• Morton's Fork: After Michelle spends time in the bunker, she realizes there is a genuine threat on the surface that Howard's bunker is protecting them from. However, as she connects with and learns more from Emmett, Howard grows increasingly unstable, eventually crossing the Moral Event Horizon when he shoots him. Michelle is then faced with a terrible choice: either flee to the surface and face whatever threat is up there, or remain sequestered in the bunker with Howard, a delusional kidnapper and murderer, who will likely kill her if she does anything that infuriates him. She ends up choosing the former scenario.
• Motifs: Layers/levels, represented visually by most of the film taking place in an underground bunker with brief glimpses of the outside world, which plays into the theme of the film: monsters, which take the perfectly human and mundane form of Howard and the otherworldly threat of alien invaders, both of which operate on two different "levels".
• Mythology Gag:
  • The first trailer for this movie appeared before a Michael Bay movie 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. The first trailer for the original Cloverfield movie appeared before a different movie by Michael Bay.
  • When the monsters finally make their appearance and Michelle turns and runs, the camera starts shaking, echoing the shaky-cam found footage of the first film.
  • Emmett's driver's license reveals he registered for it on the same day of the original Cloverfield's American release date.
  • When Michelle stops for gas, you can briefly see a neon sign in the convenience store advertising Slusho, JJ Abrams' fictional brand which he features in all of his works.
• No Sex Allowed: Howard immediately enforces a 'No Touching' rule between Michelle and Emmett, even though they show no signs of romantic affection to each other at any point in the film. Michelle breaks this rule once on purpose, flirting with Emmett in order to make Howard angry enough to not notice when she steals his keys.
• Nothing Is Scarier: This film embodies the trope. We get the sense that something has happened on the surface, but we have no idea what it is. Considering Howard is quickly established as being paranoid, it's natural to take his explanations with a grain of salt, especially after finding out that he originally used the bunker to kidnap young women. As one review pointed out, this film makes the idea that there's nothing going on outside even scarier than the thought that there is.
• Not the First Victim: Howard kidnaps Michelle and imprisons her in his fallout shelter. When Michelle tries to climb out, she discovers that she is Howard's second victim: another missing girl had scratched a cry for help on the skylight with an earring.
• The Place: The eponymous 10 Cloverfield Lane is the location of the underground bunker, which is the setting of the film.
• Precision F-Strike: Michelle gives an exhausted "...Fuuuck." after escaping Howard and the bunker, only to be sighted by an alien patrol craft that unleashes a lamprey-faced tracker creature after her.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "I accept your apology."
• Properly Paranoid: As the movie progresses, Howard becomes more and more unhinged and he did initially appear as a Creepy Good character. However he was ultimately right about what was happening outside the bunker with the exception of acidic air.
• Psychological Horror: Howard does not want Michelle or Emmett to leave the bunker, claiming there's been some sort of attack. Is he right, with nobody able to see their family again, or is he wrong, with Michelle and Emmett trapped in a confined space with a domineering, possibly crazy person? Howard turns out to be right, and then the horror shifts to his twisted desire to have Michelle act as a Replacement Goldfish for his daughter Megan.
• Rasputinian Death: Howard falls face first into a perchloric acid spill, is set slightly on fire, has an extremely heavy storage shelf dropped on him, and gets his hand completely destroyed. Then the bunker explodes.
• Replacement Goldfish: A popular theory is that Howard never got over the loss of his daughter who was taken away by his ex-wife. So he kidnapped a young woman and held her against her will as a replacement daughter. And he started doing the same thing again with Michelle.
• Returning the Wedding Ring: The movie opens with Michelle leaving town after having a fight with her fiancé, and we see her leave her house keys and engagement ring behind.
• The Reveal: Michelle escapes the bunker after Howard kills Emmett and discovers her makeshift hazmat suit, at which point she also discovers the air is not contaminated, and happily removes her mask, only to see a strange aircraft in the distance that's clearly not anything of this world, at which point it becomes clear that Howard was at least right about something happening on the surface.
• Ridiculously Potent Explosive: Michelle's homemade Molotov Cocktail explodes like a bomb when she throws it into the alien's mouth.
• Rock Beats Laser: The technologically superior alien warship is destroyed by a hastily assembled Molotov cocktail.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Michelle, who was abused by her father as a child, successfully defeats the equally-abusive Howard, who has been trying to become a Parental Substitute to her. It's made clear that overpowering Howard is essentially Michelle "killing" her childhood trauma and becoming strong enough to defend herself and others.
  • The film ends with Michelle literally sitting at a crossroads, deciding between going to safety in Baton Rouge or joining a group of resistance fighters in Houston. She chooses the latter, symbolically overcoming her Fatal Flaw of always running from danger.
• Shell-Shock Silence: After Howard shoots Emmett, only his own dialogue is audible at first, due to his wearing earplugs.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Emmett provides most of the jokes, and when he dies, everything gets super-serious.
• Shout-Out: John Goodman playing a psycho living in his own fantasy world and melting dead bodies with an acid sounds oddly familiar.
• Shown Their Work: Everything that Howard says about the perchloric acid is completely true. It just isn't green.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • Half of the trailer is set to the upbeat "I Think We're Alone Now", by Tommy James and The Shondells, which gradually slows and distorts as the trailer gets progressively crazier. Fitting, for a movie with a scenario that leaves three people together in a bunker.
  • Howard picks up-tempo songs from the jukebox in the bunker, even as the situation between him and his bunker-mates deteriorates.
  • An unsettling musical leitmotif from the original Cloverfield is used multiple times throughout the film.
• Spiritual Successor: Despite the emphasis placed on its thematic connection to Cloverfield, a much stronger connection is made with fellow Bad Robot production Lost. Between the cozy bunker, ambiguous threat of "contamination," and unseen otherworldly sounds, one could be forgiven for thinking this is more a sequel to the TV series than the movie.
• Stealth Sequel: Averted. The original script was not written with Cloverfield in mind. However, it was turned into a 'relative' of Cloverfield when the script was optioned. Once the first trailer dropped, Wild Mass Guessing began over its connection to the film. Its cast, while they knew they were making something related to Cloverfield, it was hazy as to what its true connections were. Ultimately, it is not a direct sequel, but instead it takes a sinister, other-worldly bent on isolation films as the original did with kaiju and Blair Witch- style POV films.
• Taking the Heat: Emmett does this for Michelle when Howard finds out they've been stealing tools in order to make their improvised hazmat suit and starts threatening both of them with corrosive acid to discover what they're planning, by confessing and claiming he was trying to make a weapon while saying Michelle was innocent. Howard then shoots him in the head.
• Technicolor Toxin: The aliens' Deadly Gas is sickly green. Likewise the perchloric acid, which is actually colorless in real life.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Michelle utters "Ah, this sucks." the first time she passes through the Air-Vent Passageway towards the air filtration room.
• Throwing the Distraction: A variant. When one of the aliens creeps up on Michelle in the barn, she activates the car's remote in order to direct the alien away from her.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Like most J.J. Abrams films, the trailers do a good job of setting the mood while leaving the plot completely mysterious. However, some of the trailers do show a scene of the bunker shaking and strange lights in the sky, which means Howard is correct in thinking that something is genuinely wrong above ground. However, being a film carrying the Cloverfield name, audiences would likely expect that going into it.
• Two Guys and a Girl: The three main characters, essentially.
• Unabashed B-Movie Fan: During the Good-Times Montage, Michelle and Emmett watch the VHS of a fictitious movie called Cannibal Airlines.
• The Voice: Michelle's fiancé, Ben, is only heard over the phone.
• Waking Up Elsewhere: After her car accident Michelle wakes up in an unfamiliar room which turns out to be an underground bunker of a Crazy Survivalist.
• Wham Line: After seeing a certain picture Howard showed Michelle earlier in the film...
  Emmett: Wait, that's...that's not Megan.
• Wham Shot:
  • Michelle seeing the word "Help!" carved from inside the bunker's window.
  • An underplayed example: The shot revealing that Howard has shaved is meaningless out of context. In context, the implications are terrifying.
• What If?: Invoked by Emmett talking about how he got wasted the day before he was due to ride the bus off to a new life, and he couldn't bring himself to go in the following days.
• What You Are in the Dark: At the very end of the film, Michelle is driving away from the bunker and comes to a split on the highway—one road leads toward Baton Rouge, where survivors are gathering, and the other toward Houston, where La Résistance is putting out a desperate call for anyone with medical or combat training to help fight back against the aliens. Michelle pauses for a moment—she's spent her whole life running from danger instead of facing it—and ultimately decides to go to Houston to protect others.
• Workplace-Acquired Abilities: Before the film, Michelle was training to become a fashion designer. She later uses those skills to create an entire Hazmat Suit, complete with gas mask, out of a shower curtain.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Near the end, Michelle looking over the field, notices that the helicopter-like noise the group heard earlier was actually being made by an obviously alien craft. It drops a creature into the field near her and she utters a "Come ON!" at the complete absurdity that Howard was actually right about an alien invasion.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The one thing that even Crazy Survivalist Howard thinks is too far-fetched to be happening.

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