10 Cloverfield Lane Explained More Than An Alien Invasion Story

Our cinematic history is practically overflowing with films about vicious aliens who don’t want anything more than to take over Earth by killing all its human population. While it was an innovative genre many decades ago, with time almost all the films under this banner have taken on a cliched vibe, repeating the same story again and again. Dan Trachtenberg’s 10 Cloverfield Lane despite being a part of this genre is much more, so much more than just a story about another alien invasion. 

For starters, 10 Cloverfield Lane isn’t an alien invasion story…

…not until the very end at least. The story begins with the character of Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) leaving her fiancé, Ben, after a fight. He calls her while she is on the road, pleading for her to return as running away is not the solution to their fight. Now, this is an important aspect when it comes to Michelle, which will come out in the subtext of 10 Cloverfield Lane. When it comes to facing difficult situations and fighting back, Michelle has always chosen to instead run away or give up.

Suddenly, the vehicle behind Michelle bumps into her and causes her to horribly crash her car. When she awakes she finds herself in an underground bunker, chained to a wall. The bunker is owned by an middle aged man named Howard (John Goodman) who tells her that he found her on the road, after her accident. He brought her back to his place as aliens have invaded Earth and have rendered the atmosphere outside too toxic for any kind of life to sustain. Michelle obviously does not believe his claims, especially since he had her chained in the first place. Even when she meets another man, Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), who corroborates Howard’s alien story and how he had to fight Howard to get inside the bunker, she is skeptical. And when she sees Howard’s truck, we get some flashbacks that it might have been him who crashed into her car. 

Convinced that he is a psychopath, she attempts to run away but just then a woman bangs on the door of the bunker, demanding to be let in. Michelle sees for herself that her skin is melting away, which proves that Howard was telling the truth and the outside air is too poisonous to survive. Later, Howard confesses that he accidentally rammed into her car and brought her to the bunker to assuage his guilt.  From then, Michelle gives in to her fate and Howard softens his my-way-or-the-highway attitude, at least towards her. He even tells her how his wife took away their daughter, Megan, and shows a picture of her to Michelle. 

The truth about Howard

Days bleed into months and Michelle and Emmett’s trust in Howard increases, until one day the air ventilation system fails and Michelle goes into a small duct to turn it back on. In the mechanical room, she finds a locked skylight, which has the word “HELP” scratched on the inside as well as a bloody earring on the floor. It is the same earring Michelle saw Howard’s daughter wearing in the picture he showed her. But when she discloses this to Emmett and shows him the photograph, he drops one bombshell revelation- the girl is not Megan, but Brittany, a local girl who had gone missing two years ago. 

This paints a rather scary picture, that Howard kidnapped this girl to fill in the absence of his daughter, most probably killed her in his rage, and is calculative enough to use her image to gain Michelle’s sympathy. While initially, Howard appeared to be a crazy loner with increasingly fanatic conspiracy theories, he is actually a dangerously unhinged psychopath and a murderer who has possibly killed more than once. Emmett and Michell start making a hazmat suit out of the shower curtains, thinking that they will outwit Howard and run outside, as they believe that there are bound to be other people who managed to survive. 

While playing games one night, we get a proper glimpse into Howard’s psyche beyond his domineering aura in the beginning. When Emmett asks him to guess the word “woman” by gesturing at Michelle, he keeps going on and on about “girl” and “princess,” which explains how he fails to see Michelle as a grown woman with a right to her freedom and instead is stuck on forcing her to live with him as his daughter. It’s only Emmett’s presence that has stopped him from doing just that.

Howard is on to Emmett and Michelle

Howard finds a few tools that Emmett and Michelle snagged from him earlier to make the suit and demands an answer from them or else he will drown them in the vat of perchloric acid he has in the bathroom which is capable of melting even human bones. Emmett takes all the heat to save Michelle and distract Howard from finding out the suit. In retaliation, Howard shoots Emmett in the head and proceeds to throw his body in the acid after telling a horrified Michelle that this is how it was supposed to be from the beginning, him and her. 

Michelle hurries to complete the suit but is caught by Howard. She manages to flee and upend the barrel of acid on him, which also starts a fire. As a half-burned Howard follows her, she manages to get out of the bunker just as it explodes. 

The plot twist in 10 Cloverfield Lane

Nope, the plot twist wasn’t the revelation that Howard was a crazy killer as signs of that were there all along. Whether he presented himself as a savior who demands to be respected or the clean-shaven dad act he pulls after calmly killing a person it is not a surprise that he is psychotic. When Michelle gets out, she discovers that the air outside is not poisonous after all and for a second, it feels like the whole alien story was just something Howard cooked up to keep Michelle in. But just then an alien biomechanical craft approaches her, alerted by the explosion of the bunker, and drops off an alien creature in her direction, before emitting a poisonous green gas to kill her. She manages to barricade herself in Howard’s truck but the spaceship starts pulling her in. Michelle then creates a Molotov cocktail with a bottle of alcohol and succeeds in destroying the ship. 

Many people who have watched 10 Cloverfield Lane have often complained about the ending and how it doesn’t fit with the narrative of the preceding plot. Well, let us tell you it couldn’t have been more fitting. In the beginning, we highlighted how Michelle has run away from complicated situations throughout her life. Some would say that her making the hazmat suit and fighting Howard were all brave decisions but at the end of the day, they were the only options she had. It wasn’t like she had an alternative solution to survival. The same goes for her badass move in the face of the spaceship. 

The true moment of reckoning for Michelle comes when she leaves in the abandoned car of the woman who had banged on the door of the bunker earlier in the film and discovers that there are more survivors out there on a radio transmission. At first, the instructions are for survivors to reach Baton Rouge and then an open call to anyone who is willing to fight or help others in any way against the aliens to join them in Houston.

We see Michelle at a crossroads, with one road leading off to Houston while another tapers off towards Baton Rouge. And she makes the decision to drive off towards Houston, to join the fight while the stormy sky reveals more ships that are also heading in the same direction. This is the first time in her life that Michelle had willingly chosen the right although difficult option. She is not the same indecisive person who ran from anything even mildly difficult- now she knows that the road ahead is dangerous but she is ready to face it. 

10 Cloverfield Lane basically highlights the biggest truth about life- problems never end but what actually changes is how we alter our perception towards them and stop our fear from crippling us.