“Monsters come in many forms.” That’s the motto of 10 Cloverfield Lane since 2016, a claustrophobic thriller in which a young woman named Michelle is kept trapped underground. While much of the film focuses on her attempts to escape from prison, Michelle finally discovers that the outside world is just as dangerous due to an alien invasion.
Despite being called Cloverfield, the film itself has little to do with the 2008 monster movie, other than the sci-fi monster / alien attack element. However, the Cloverfield franchise is known for its incredibly complex ARGs (Alternate Reality Games), which in each episode reveal much more about the fictional universe and justify the events of this film. ARG 10 Cloverfield Lane has gone so far as to be linked to real-life events using personal websites.
What is 10 Cloverfield Lane?
Cloverfield Lane 10 begins when a young woman named Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) comes across a car accident and wakes up in a sort of pile. Howard Stambler greets her and tells her that he saved her life from a catastrophic crash on the surface. Michelle, Howard, and a 3rd man named Emmett appear the only survivors.
When Michelle first gets used to life in the bunker, she and Emmett begin to reveal inconsistencies in Howard’s story, suspecting that he has an ulterior motive that revolves around having a character in Michelle. After killing Howard Emmett, Michelle devises a plan to escape the bunker only to discover that Howard told the truth: the enemy’s aliens have arrived on Earth. He succeeds in destroying an alien he is looking for before looking for others.
How does 10 Cloverfield Lane connect to the Cloverfield universe?
ARG, which ran up to 10 Cloverfield Lane releases, was incredibly boring, with fans revealing some fake sites that helped build the film’s lore. First discovered that tagruato.jp, a place that was part of the first film’s ARG, was updated to include a picture of Howard with John Goodman on the “Employee of the Month” list. From the Tagruato company. This is important because Tagruato was also responsible for the monster’s appearance in the first Cloverfield movie. After posting a few suggestions on Tagruato’s website, fans were able to find another website called FunAndPrettyThings, which contained some encrypted messages from Howard.
These posts revealed that Howard had discovered something in space while working for Bold Futura, Tagruato’s subsidiary of satellite construction. Howard, who became more and more aggressive and paranoid, left the company shortly after becoming an employee of the month and retired to a shelter he had built in anticipation of the arrival of the aliens. Due to deteriorating mental health, Howard’s family left him. By setting up the FunAndPrettyThings site as a desperate attempt to connect with his daughter Megan, Howard could find the character of a new girl, thereby kidnapping Michelle.
Howard’s connection to Tagruato is mentioned in the film. Michelle briefly received a cover sent to Howard with the Bold Futura logo. All of this follows the trend that the Tagruato Company is responsible for the horrific events in the Cloverfield series, but not for the aliens in this case. Instead, Tagruato was accountable for transforming Howard Stambler into a monster. After all, monsters come in many forms.
