10 Cloverfield Lane almost included a different ending and a few additional plot changes within the story. Director Dan Trachtenberg revealed that the movie almost looked a little different, but various elements were cut as they didn’t serve the direction of the movie.
10 Cloverfield Lane is the spiritual sequel to Cloverfield. The story focuses on a woman named Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), after she wakes up in an underground bunker following a car accident. She’s holed up with two men named Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) and Howard (John Goodman), who inform her that a nuclear attack has taken place. Howard says they need to stay underground for their safety, but Michelle expects something sinister is at play.
Trachtenberg’s decision to cut these scenes ultimately benefitted the film. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a minimalist horror film with just loose connections to its predecessor. Any additional storylines would have weighed the movie down and taken away from its intention of bringing audiences back to the world of the original movie. Here’s everything Trachtenberg decided to cut out of 10 Cloverfield Lane.
10 Cloverfield Lane’s Opening Sequence Was Different
10 Cloverfield Lane starts at a tense spot. The audience first meets Michelle hurriedly packing things up and heading to her car so she can leave her boyfriend. The two are arguing on the phone when Michelle crashes her car. The film’s original opening saw Michelle and her boyfriend at a very different spot in their relationship. 10 Cloverfield Lane initially opened with Michelle nervously accompanying her boyfriend to meet his parents for the first time. Opening with a protagonist in a happy situation, worried about something frivolous is a common horror movie trope. Trachtenberg opted to open his film in a more unconventional way.
Diehard horror movie fans come to expect the traditional opening scene that Trachtenberg actively wanted to avoid. But immediately placing Michelle in a less-than-ideal situation subverts this expectation, showing audiences that they should expect the unexpected in 10 Cloverfield Lane. Once Michelle wakes up in Howard’s bunker, she doesn’t know who to trust. By opening the movie in a fluid and chaotic situation, 10 Cloverfield Lane aligns with the movie’s prominent theme of paranoia. The audience feels the paranoia right along with Michelle, and that feeling lasts for the whole movie. So when 10 Cloverfield Lane reveals its connection to Cloverfield in the finale, the audience is thrown for a loop. It’s a fun viewing experience that may not have been possible if the atmosphere of paranoia wasn’t established so early on.
Michelle Was Almost Drugged In 10 Cloverfield Lane
In an interview with IGN, Trachtenberg revealed the movie almost included a sub-plot in which Emmett and Howard slip Michelle sedatives. This would have led to her being convinced she was being watched. Specifically, she was worried they were going to watch her as she showered. While Trachtenberg directed the film, he did not write it. After he saw this moment in the script, he decided it wasn’t necessary to the overall story. Essentially, he found it to be a little too cliché, citing the fact that a tense shower scene is an overused trope in many horror films. Since 10 Cloverfield Lane draws heavy inspiration from Psycho, so a shower scene could technically have functioned as an homage. But as horror tends to sexualize female protagonists far too often, Trachtenberg ultimately made the right call.
Cutting this particular storyline continues to leave the theory of Emmett being a villain open-ended. 10 Cloverfield Lane doesn’t divulge much of Emmett’s backstory, which results in the audience unsure of whether he is to be trusted. Fans speculate that he may have killed the girl who was featured in Howard’s photos. This mystery makes Emmett intimidating. Following through with this deleted subplot and making Emmett an overt villain would have gone against the movie’s themes of paranoia. Michelle is trapped in a claustrophobic underground bunker, and doesn’t know who she can trust. Keeping Emmett as a figure who the audience is unsure about adds to that atmosphere. Michelle is constantly questioning everything; the audience is supposed to do this as well. Such an outcome wouldn’t have been as possible or likely if 10 Cloverfield Lane outright demonstrated that Emmett is a villain.
Howard Almost Survived In 10 Cloverfield Lane
10 Cloverfield Lane‘s central theme of paranoia is mainly focused at Howard. He presents himself as Michelle’s savior and is very protective of her throughout the film, but there seems to be something off about him. Even though he claims to have Michelle’s best interest at heart, he grows increasingly more sinister as the movie goes on. Naturally, that means Michelle becomes more paranoid of him. She manages to kill Howard and escape the bunker, only to find out he was telling the truth about an attack all along. Instead of a nuclear attack, however, there’s an extraterrestrial threat. 10 Cloverfield Lane‘s ending paints an interesting, but complicated picture of Howard. He was absolutely a villainous character, but really did have Michelle’s best interest in mind, even if he had a twisted way of showing it.
An alternate ending of 10 Cloverfield Lane would have let Howard survive. Emmett took on more of the villain role in that iteration of 10 Cloverfield Lane. However, the roles that the movie settled on for Emmett and Howard are far more fitting for the movie’s themes. 10 Cloverfield Lane has Emmett and Howard living in the grey area on the good guy/bad guy scale, which makes them far more intriguing than if they were given clear-cut roles. Trachtenberg stated that this version of the film looked completely different than the one released in theaters. It’s hard to say how the previously scrapped version of 10 Cloverfield Lane compares to the one that was released. The version of the movie that Trachtenberg released is the perfect supplement to the Cloverfield universe.
While 10 Cloverfield Lane is only a loose sequel to Cloverfield, it perfectly falls in line with its predecessor. Both movies are small and contained, but still manages to build substantial tension. It’s becoming more and more unlikely that a direct sequel to Cloverfield will ever happen. It’s not a sequel in the traditional sense, but 10 Cloverfield Lane is a worthy followup to the sleeper hit. Trachtenberg’s decision to change certain plots and alternate endings cemented that.
