10 Cloverfield Lane star Mary Elizabeth Winstead opens up about JJ Abrams' secret project

While everyone was busy being in awe of him for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, JJ Abrams was busy preparing to drop a trailer onto film fans' heads for a movie they were not expecting at all - and had heard nothing about previously - entitled 10 Cloverfield Lane. Exploiting the art of misdirection at its finest, the sneak peak arrived with no warning, followed by Abrams confirming that the film is indeed related to the 2008 action-horror movie Cloverfield, though it's not really a direct sequel.

"There is this veil of secrecy to it from the very beginning," stated Mary Elizabeth Winstead, star of the Dan Trachtenberg-directed film in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "We were making this movie in a little bubble where nobody else knew what we were doing and there's really only three actors in the whole thing, so it kind of felt like this really intimate experience. Now that it's about to come out, it's sort of crazy - like, 'Oh yeah, people are excited to see this movie'. I forgot that that was going to happen."

Considering just how under wraps the whole project has been, we've only got the short trailer to go on in terms of storyline and it's safe to say, that barely gives anything away either. It's simple and effective, centring on three characters - one of which is Winstead's - who are seemingly living in an underground bunker.

John Goodman, who also stars, looks to be some kind of doomsday survivalist and at first you conclude that he bought this young woman and other young man (John Gallagher Jr) into this environment to protect them from something terrible outside. However, as the eerie backing track 'I Think We're Alone Now' becomes increasingly distorted, the events in the trailer point towards the idea that the bunker isn't such a 'home sweet home' after all.

"It's about the actors interacting with each other and the tension that builds, just all wondering if they are who they say the are, if they're telling the truth or not, and really wondering what's outside," Winstead said about the premise of the film.

10 Cloverfield Lane will reach US cinemas on 11 March 2016 and UK screens on 8 April.