The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) Review

“We’re not in Kentucky anymore”

This past weekend, in a typical Cloverfield/JJ Abrams move, (i.e. atypical to almost everybody else) immediately following the Super Bowl game Netflix dropped the news they would make the brand new, never-before-seen entry into the mysterious Cloverfield franchise available on their platform. From there it’s safe to say that the internet was sent into a tizzy, eagerly awaiting the final play of the match and check out this possibly game-changing release. But, other than the element of surprise does The Cloverfield Paradox have any other tricks up its sleeves? Or is this just a smart marketing opportunity for Netflix?

Beware mild spoilers ahead.

Set in the near future, the Earth is suffering an energy crisis. Up above the world, on an orbiting space station, a group of scientists are trying to perfect a particle accelerator to generate an unlimited supply of energy. But of course, when they finally do achieve their mission things don’t turn out exactly the way they expected and find themselves lost in space, with no planet Earth in sight and some unwanted guests now aboard. From there all hell including worms, disembodied arms and tons more breaks loose as the crew desperately work together to figure out what is going on and how to fix it.

Unfortunately, it’s at this early juncture of the film where the cracks begin to reveal themselves and they are hard to ignore, only becoming more glaring as it continues. The main concept and early thrust of the movie, of a space station lost and isolated in space, is interesting and scary enough on its own to carry the entire film. But the script continuously adds problems, one after the other, seemingly without any real rhyme or reason to the point that you just don’t care anymore. Anything can happen so there is no weight to anything that does happen.

It also doesn’t help matters that the script never allows us to grow attached to these characters before the bad things begin to happen to them. Apart from a brief scene of heavy handed exposition at the very beginning featuring the “main” character Ava (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) we never find out anything of substance about any of her other crew members, not even their basic characteristics beyond their stereotypical roles based on their countries of origin.

This is a powerful cast that includes big hitters; Daniel Brühl, David Oyelowo, Elizabeth Debicki and none of them are given anything to do except look puzzled. Our “main” character Ava, is largely forgotten and unused, saved for the very beginning and the very end.

Even the positives we do have, have to be tapered somewhat. Bear McCreary returns to provide the score, as he did in 10 Cloverfield Lane. A score which is mostly fantastic, though with the wildly flailing inconsistent tone of the film some pieces are jarringly heroic put against moments of supposed horror.

Whereas 10 Cloverfield Lane was a slow burn thriller that used its setting well and took its time, Paradox rarely lifts its foot off of the accelerator pedal. Always moving us forward from scene to scene with no time to catch our breath, or understand what the heck is going on. Things just happen, plot strands appear and disappear at a whim, characters teleport around the ship making it impossible to keep track of where anyone is at any given time until someone screams and they all run towards the next random, unexplained horror. There is more running down repetitive spaceship corridors here than your average episode of Doctor Who.

And all that is to say nothing about the wholly perfunctory and tacked on sub plot involving Ava’s husband back on Earth. Without giving away too much perhaps, the most infuriating element of it all is how the film attempts to tie itself to the larger Cloverfield franchise. Giving needless explanations to things that didn’t need any, filling in gaps and diluting the mystery (the defining characteristic of the franchise).

Somewhere along the line you may begin to believe that The Cloverfield Paradox might in fact be cleverer than you are giving it credit for. That everything it’s doing is fully intentional. The ship design looking like the inner workings of a watch, spinning around in a way that makes you nauseous, intentional. The fact characters know things they can’t possibly know, or that were told to others in secret, intentional. That whole swathes of scenes have been ripped out just to leave you puzzled must be intentional, and at the last minute Paradox is surely going to throw a curveball that will clear everything up, forcing you to stand and applaud its hidden genius. But nope, it just ends, as perplexingly as it all started. We feel for the poor editor who must have taken a look at what they had to work with and cried.

This is Event Horizon, just somehow dumber. Characters act illogically and stupidly, making Prometheus look smart in comparison. It takes off Life, which ripped off Alien. This is The Cloverfield Paradox, with the paradox being why did Netflix buy and put this out?

Does this prove that films in the future do not need to premiere in multiplexes? Well the production cost for Paramount was reportedly around $40 million and they sold it to Netflix for $50 million and they are still planning to release the next Cloverfield in cinemas themselves. Take from that what you will.

Final Decision:

The Cloverfield Paradox could be retitled “A Series of Unfortunate and Ultimately Confusing Events”. Aside from a few visually interesting shots and icky body horror moments there is only aggravation to find here. It was a bold move by Netflix that will no doubt generate a lot social media buzz but doesn’t change the world.