A few months back, 10 Cloverfield Lane just kind of appeared out of nowhere. Not really, it had been in development under the title Valencia, and there’s been talk of a mystery Cloverfield project damn near ever since the found footage creature feature hit in 2008. Still, it was like, "Hey, this movie is coming out in a two months," instead of the usual build up time. And to be fair, we still don’t know a ton about it, or how it connects to the first film, though producer and Bad Robot honcho J.J. Abrams has revealed a bit about that and whether or not we'll see the same monster.

Viral marketing for 10 Cloverfield Lane has been popping up all over the place, but still leaves more questions than is answers. J.J. Abrams recently talked with Fandango and shared a bit about how the new movie connects to Cloverfield, and how it doesn't. He said if fans approach this as a direct sequel, they will be surprised by what they see, though he added that the link will make sense. About the moster from the first film, he said:

While the Cloverfield monster isn’t in this movie, there’s a new monster and there’s something else that happens… but I don’t want to ruin the ending.

For those of you familiar with J.J. Abrams and his notorious penchant for secrecy on his movies, this is a suitably cryptic statement. Though we knew there was some connection, from what we’ve seen we never really expected 10 Cloverfield Lane to be a direct sequel, and with what Abrams says here, it sounds as if the connection will be more oblique than explicit.

And sorry if fans of Cloverfield were hoping to see that monster come back to cause more on screen ruckus. Still, 10 Cloverfield Lane won’t be entirely sans giant monster, and the prospect of a Bad Robot-produced massive rampaging creature is more than enough to get us amped for this.

Changing up the formula from last time out, 10 Cloverfield Lane eschews the found footage trappings for a more straightforward narrative approach. Instead of sprawling through the streets of New York City, the action here looks fairly contained, primarily only involves three actors and one setting. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Michelle, who wakes up in after a car crash in an underground bunker. The survivalist owner of said bunker, John Goodman’s Howard Stambler, says that the world outside has been destroyed by, well, by something mysterious, and refuses to let her leave. There’s obviously something more going on, and Michelle has to figure out where the truth lies.

10 Cloverfield Lane hits theaters in just a few weeks on March 11.