I wanted more monsters, but overall I thought it was pretty good. The scene in the beginning where she wakes up and realizes she isn’t going anywhere–very creepy and disturbing. One thing I didn’t buy–the scene at the end where
Michelle blows up the alien craft with a Molotov cocktail…made with a bottle of scotch. :dubious:
I’m pretty sure he had a real daughter. When Michelle showed Emmett the picture of the girl, IIRC Emmett said that that girl wasn’t the daughter and that the actual daughter had gone to school with his sister but that they had left Goodman’s character years before.
Goodman also commented about how much his daughter had loved him before “her mom turned her against me”(or words to that effect).
I actually like that the movie gets us to ask a lot of questions without necessarily providing the answers and letting us decide for ourselves.
For example, did the mom and daughter just up and leave or did John Goodman’s character kill them and snap and essentially try and replace the daughter with the other girl?
How much time had passed between the accident and when Michelle woke up?
Why was she running away from her boyfriend?(Again, I like the idea that Bradley Cooper was playing his character from Alias)
How exactly did Emmett get hurt? We hear comments about him having to fight his way in, and also Goodman accuses him of “doing it to himself” and causing an accident in which he destroyed “a week’s worth of food”.
And a whole bunch of others.
Maybe they should’ve used a bottle of Howard’s “vodka” instead. 
I like open endings, but that’s too unresolved even for my tastes. I liked the ending as it was. She completed her character arc. She was no longer running from trouble.
I also liked imagining the internal monolog as she’s listening to the request for anyone with medical or combat training. She now knows how to stitch someone up and defeat alien ships with Molotov cocktails.
Also, if you shorten the ending, you probably have to cut my favorite line of the movie, when she sees the ship and says “Oh, come on!”
Tactically, “incapacitate the captor and take his gun” should come entirely before “sneak around constructing a shower-curtain hazmat suit”. But I assume that Howard was either always planning to kill Emmett, or was unhinged enough that he wasn’t planning it, but was going to lose control at some point anyway.
I think it’s less. Michelle is first led to the bathroom after the fire alarm/crutch stabbing. And she says she doesn’t have to go. So from her capture to that point is less than a day. Her first escape attempt is at dinner that night. That’s when she cuts and stitches Howard’s forehead. When she makes it out, his head has healed, but not completely. Facial stitches are usually removed in less than a week. It looks like there’s maybe two or three weeks more healing there. So I think that she’s in there for a max of four weeks.
It was very considerate of the dying lady outside to go back and turn off her headlights after smashing her head on the outside door and before crawling off to the shed to die so that Michelle would be able to start her car. 
I didn’t understand that. Must have been a very bad break.
“I accept your apology” was the most unexpected moment of the movie for me.
A favorite moment was Howard’s "That’s what I call teamwork" song and dance.
Any Louisiana Dopers know if there are really signs to both Houston and Baton Rouge? They’re 436 miles apart per google, so it seems odd for both to be on turn signs.
Given that neither city has any significance in the story, I’d imagine they found a nice sign and spot for that shot, then wrote the locations into the story. That’s got to be easier than fabricating a road sign, right?
According to the sign, she had to turn left (North) to go to Houston and straight (East) to go to Baton Rouge, which actually puts her in Texas, south of Houston. I-10 is the direct route from Houston to BR, and the coastline extends all the way up to east Houston, pretty much forcing her to go via I-10 for some part of her route.
Therefore, there wouldn’t be any sign that says “Houston - left, Baton Rouge - straight ahead” as the geography doesn’t work for such a sign, and this would definitely not be in Louisiana - it’s geographically impossible.
I noticed this last night and called it for a nitpick.
It’s also only 300 miles from Houston to BR, btw.
Roads do not continue linearly forever. There are plenty of intersections where you have to, say, turn left for one destination, and right for another, even though the destinations are actually in totally different directions.
The geography does make this sign unlikely, though.
Every road sign I’ve ever seen would give the distance to the nearest town, followed possibly by the nearest major metropolitan area. The sign in question implies that there’s 400 miles of empty road ahead, in both directions.
(This is all ridiculous nitpickery, of course. It’s just a movie convention.)
Was I the only one startled to find out at the end this was taking place near Houston?
I could see Michelle and Ben(her boyfriend) being transplanted East Coasters, but neither Howard nor Emmett had Texas or Southern accents.
100% agreed
It was (supposedly) in Louisiana. There were a few references to that - Emmet talked about his bus ticket to a university in Louisiana (LSU maybe?).
Louisiana Tech, in Ruston.
We just saw this and really enjoyed its twistiness. And there are really well done moments, like the Little Women scene, or when you see the picture of ‘Megan’ and realize that one way or another, Emmitt isn’t long for the world.
All three of the actors were terrific.
My truck’s lights have an Auto setting with a built-in delay after I take the keys out. I’m not sure what make/model acid lady was driving, but it’s one possibility.
I have a sign near my house that points left to Boston, though Boston is to the right, because it loops under an overpass.
Howard said that he was forty miles north of Lake Charles (which is in Louisiana). I believe the scene in Michelle’s house/apartment was supposed to be New Orleans.
I went into this film completely unspoiled. I missed the marketing campaign altogether and have never even heard of “Cloverfield.” I also had no idea that JJ Abrams was involved in the movie, or maybe I would have expected the aliens in the end. Everyone in my group just assumed Howard was whackadoodle and that she’d realize it when she opened the hatch. So that part of the plot came as a complete surprise.
Some thoughts:
Passage of time: It was at least several weeks because Howard’s wound was healing (conveniently without a scar, BTW), Michelle’s nail polish was ruined but not completely gone, and the corn that was tall and green in the beginning and ready to harvest at the end. I’m thinking 2 months. It couldn’t have been more than one growing season or the corn would have been dry/dead.
The hardest plot points for me to swallow was the air infiltration unit being inaccessible to the owner, and the fact that Howard didn’t have at least a gas mask in inventory already, let alone a HAZMAT suit.
It was hard to stomach that Emmett and Michelle didn’t just sneak up on Howard while he was immersed in “Pretty in Pink” and whack him over the head. They were two against one, and he had to sleep sometime. Or why they didn’t just ask permission to build a HAZMAT suit so that they didn’t have to sneak around. (“Howard, we’re not going to know when the air is pure enough to leave, and it’ll be a risk to whoever ventures out first. So let’s at least build a protective suit so that we’ve got something between us and Agent Orange.”)
I loved the way the movie made you question and re-question Howard’s sanity. The neighbor begging to be let in was a crazy reveal. And Emmitt’s execution was a jump out of your seat moment.
The acting was great, the suspense was terrific. And while they certainly hinted that Howard might end up turning on Michelle, I’m glad that it didn’t degrade into sexual violence. It was also a strange relief to see two unknowns (at least to me) cast as very believable “every men” vs., say, Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper.
P.S. If I had alien ships seeking out human life, I wouldn’t be driving along country roads in the middle of the night with my headlights on. Just sayin’.
I know this thread has open spoilers, and I’ve been trying to figure out something by reading posts here, as I doubt I’ll se the movie. If you can answer a couple of quesitions for me, concealing the answer if you think it would be best, I’d appreciate it.
There’s no monster, right? What Goodman’s character is hiding from is aliens that arrive on Earth? Are we food to the aliens?
Well, the aliens are pretty monstrous. But there’s no Godzilla-like beast. What the aliens want is not made clear.
It is pretty clear they are not friendly at all though.
There’s no giant monster like in Cloverfield but there is a monster that is from an alien spaceship.
I think the question of whether John Goodman was hiding from the aliens or a broken clock that gets one right by accident is up for discussion.