10 Cloverfield Lane: 8 Reasons The Marketing Was Genius

5. The Mystery Box Perfected

By this point you should already know about J.J. Abrams' mystery box; it feels like every review of 10 Cloverfield Lane has made a jokey reference to it in the title (guess what the original title for this article was). For those of you who don't know (can't blame you - most quotings of the term don't explain it), Abrams views filmmaking as a literal mystery box; the thrill of a movie is as much in the anticipation as it is finding out what's going on, something he takes in very literal terms. Hence the secrecy around Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the Khan reveal in Star Trek Into Darkness, the seeding of ideas through Lost and, of course, everything to do with Cloverfield. 10 Cloverfield Lane is one of the best uses of this device. It goes for some of the more standard tricks, through its marketing posing several key questions - Why are they in the bunker? What's out there? How does this link to Cloverfield? - but advances things further; due in part to the contrasting of title with content, there's a big, more base query of "Just what is this?" The mystery is so big and the box so small it's impossible to not get intrigued. It helps, of course, that the movie is itself a mystery thriller, with the characters knowing about as little as the audience, meaning you're never quite sure what (or who) to trust.