10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (****)

(2016) There's only a very remote/ultimately confusing "connection" between this film and 2008's Cloverfield, so seeing one without having seen the other isn't an issue; this is, by no means, a sequel or extension of the first.  A young woman, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is in the process of leaving her husband when she's in a bad car accident.  Things get worse, though, when she wakes up with a badly injured leg that's chained to the wall of a dank basement room, part of an underground bunker owned by a guy named Howard (John Goodman), who may or may not be a nutjob who tells her he's just saved her from the end of the world outside his walls - whether by plague, pestilence or aliens he isn't sure.  To say anything more might spoil the tightly-wound, tense proceedings as both we and Michelle try to determine whether Howard is savior or psycho.  For what's essentially a three-character thriller set almost entirely in an underground bunker, 10 Cloverfield Lane manages to keep you guessing.  And damn, is John Goodman amazing in it. (rated PG-13) 

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE trailer