Have fun trying to outwit ’10 Cloverfield Lane,’ a twisty thriller new on home video

New on Blu-ray

“10 Cloverfield Lane” (Paramount DVD, $29.99; Blu-ray, $39.99; also available on VOD)

Dubbed “a spiritual sequel” to the found-footage monster movie “Cloverfield,” the clever thriller “10 Cloverfield Lane” features better actors and a superior script, but like its predecessor is an effective take on how ordinary people cope with extinction-level events. Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as a young woman named Michelle who gets knocked out in a car accident and wakes up in a basement with two men — a temperamental tyrant played by John Goodman and a sweet bumpkin played by John Gallagher Jr. — who both say that a massive global attack has poisoned the air outside. The story unfolds from there, as Michelle tries to figure out the truth of what’s going on, while discovering that whether she stays or goes, she’s in deep trouble. Enjoyably twisty and genuinely tense, “10 Cloverfield Lane” is a slight film, but a fun one to try and outguess.

Special features: Commentary track; behind-the-scenes featurette

VOD

“Clown” (available June 17)

The main selling point for the Eli Roth-produced horror film “Clown” is its director, Jon Watts, who shot this movie several years before his 2015 Sundance hit “Cop Car” — which in turn led to him getting the job helming the next Spider-Man movie. But even if this weren’t a near-forgotten first feature from one of America’s hottest young filmmakers, “Clown” would be something that fans of offbeat genre films would want to see. Starring Andy Powers as a suburban father who gets possessed by an evil clown costume — yes, you read that right — the movie starts out as a quasi-comedy then gets darker and weirder as the hero becomes a crazed child killer. “Clown” is uneven, but it’s consistently daring in the way that it toys with taboos.

TV set of the week

“The X-Files: Event Series” (20th Century Fox DVD, $19.98; Blu-ray, $29.99)

The long-awaited return of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully for a six-episode “X-Files” encore turned out to be more of an exercise in soft nostalgia than a true return to the show’s mind-blowing glory days. Still, it’s always a treat to see David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in the roles that made them famous, bantering dryly about the possible existence of aliens, monsters and government conspiracies. And this abbreviated run did at least produce “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” an episode so good that it whets the appetite for further “X-Files” someday.

Special features: Selected episode commentary tracks; featurettes; deleted scenes

From the archives

“Gold” (Kino Classics, $19.95; Blu-ray, $29.95)

Many of the great German and Austrian filmmakers of the 1920s fled to America once Adolf Hitler rose to power, but Karl Hartl stuck it out and tried to carry on the traditions of the likes of Fritz Lang and Robert Wiene while working with the Nazi-controlled studio UFA. Hartl’s best-known film — newly remastered and on Blu-ray — is “Gold,” a grandiose science-fiction adventure. There’s not much to its story of an altruistic alchemist and the corporate goons who try to manipulate him, but “Gold” still has a lot of appeal as both a historical curiosity and as one of the last of the huge-scale fantasy epics of German cinema’s first golden age.

Special features: None

Three more to see

“Ballers: The Complete First Season” (HBO DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98); “Cemetery of Splendor” (Strand DVD, $27.99; Blu-ray, $32.99); “45 Years” (Paramount DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99; 3-D, $39.99; also available on VOD)