Producer J.J. Abrams sure knows how to release a film. In 2007, he launched a mysterious trailer for an unnamed sci-fi film at a Transformers screening, creating a buzz that saw Cloverfield, as it was soon to be known, collect just over US$170 million at the box-office. Not bad for a film with a US$25 million budget.
Abrams used the same approach here. The trailer, featuring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr trapped in an underground bunker after a deadly attack has wiped out mankind, got me excited. But the result is best considered a cousin of the original rather than a member of the immediate family, which has set up expectations it can't quite reach.
Thematically, tone and genre wise, it's all Cloverfield, but on a smaller scale and without the use of the found footage style of the original. It relies on performances of its small cast, script and tight direction by director Dan Trachtenberg to build suspense.
The set up is economical. We meet Michelle (Winstead) who wakes from a nasty car accident, chained in a bunker and being cared for by Howard (Goodman), a conspiracy theorist who tells her she's lucky to be alive - not from the accident, but because America has been the target of a chemical or nuclear attack that could, he says, be aliens.
