10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

After breaking up with her boyfriend Ben, Michelle drives away from New Orleans. While in rural Louisiana, she hears news reports of blackouts in several major cities before she is sideswiped by a truck and knocked off the road, falling unconscious.

Michelle wakes in a locked room within an underground bunker, her wounds tended to. Howard, the bunker’s owner, tells her he brought her there for her protection, claiming that the air outside has been poisoned by nuclear or chemical fallout from an unknown force. Michelle is initially hostile towards Howard, but once she has calmed down, Howard takes her on a tour of the well-stocked bunker, and she meets Emmett, another survivor who found his way to it. Howard takes her to the viewport of the bunker’s exit hatch, showing her two dead pigs outside as evidence of the fallout; Michelle also sees Howard’s truck, and recognizes it from the accident. Michelle privately relays her concerns about Howard’s motivations to Emmett.

During their first dinner together, Michelle secretly takes Howard’s keys and makes her way to the hatch, but as she is about to open it, a woman, Leslie, covered in skin lesions, slams against the window demanding she be let in, then collapses. Michelle openly returns the keys and agrees that Howard was right. Howard admits to accidentally hitting her car in his panic to get to the shelter.

While the trio’s relationship becomes more relaxed, Howard still shows intolerance towards Emmett and treats Michelle as a little girl; however, Howard opens up about his daughter who he states is “not with us anymore”. Howard enlists Michelle to fix the air filtration unit when it fails since she is small enough to fit through the vents; while repairing it, she finds a locked skylight, with the word “HELP” scratched into its glass and visible to anyone outside. Further suspicious of Howard, Michelle and Emmett discover that Howard’s purported daughter was a young girl who had gone missing about two years earlier, and they suspect he abducted her to the bunker. They make plans to escape the bunker, creating a makeshift Hazmat suit behind Howard’s back. When Howard discovers tools and parts missing, he accuses the two of stealing them, threatening to immerse them in a barrel of perchloric acid. When Emmett takes sole responsibility, Howard coldly kills Emmett with a gun. In shock, Michelle is desperately making final preparations to leave, when she is surprised by Howard. She manages to escape from him with the suit. En route, she knocks over the acid barrel, which starts an electrical fire in the bunker. It later explodes, killing Howard.

Michelle dons the suit and escapes the burning bunker onto Howard’s homestead. Seeing signs of living wildlife, she takes off the suit’s helmet, but then she suddenly sees a giant biomechanical alien spacecraft, drawn by the bunker fire. A quadrupedal creature drops from the craft and chases Michelle, forcing her to hide in a shed. She then races towards the farmhouse, but the craft appears and emits a green gas that forces Michelle back into the suit. Her delay allows mechanical appendages from the ship to capture her, but she is able to craft a Molotov cocktail from items in Howard’s truck to throw into the ship. The fireball causes the appendage to drop her, and she is able to take the dead woman’s car and escape.

As she nears the Texas border she hears radio chatter instructing any survivors to head to Baton Rouge to evacuate, but also requesting the help of any able-bodied person in Houston. At a crossroads, she pauses a moment before driving off towards Houston. In the distance, a larger alien craft can be seen in the sky.

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