Review: The Cloverfield Paradox

When 10 Cloverfield Lane dropped a couple years back people were shocked that there was a surprise sequel to a found-footage monster movie from 2008 and even more so that it was actually good but the general consensus became that the actual Cloverfield part of the Cloverfield film was the weakest aspect. Now with Netflix dropping the third instalment, The Cloverfield Paradox – and Part 4 Overlord later this year – things are starting to become a little clearer. Firstly, there’s little to no actual connection between all three films, secondly, both Lane and Paradox started life as separate films that were rewritten to be Cloverfield films.

And thirdly, there’s a very good chance nobody actually knows what they’re doing with this franchise.

Set in 2028 in the midst of an Energy Crisis, a team of scientists and mechanics aboard the Cloverfield Space Station are planning to use a particle accelerator, nicknamed The Sheppard, as a way of harnessing infinite energy, unfortunately all tests have been unsuccessful across their two year mission and tensions are running high with several countries on earth preparing for war. During one final test the calibrations seem to work but the power overloads and when the crew manage to restore everything they realise that the Earth is gone and no communications can be established.

As the crew try to figure out what happened several strange and impossible occurrences start happening around them, with no other option they wonder if quantum entanglement has caused them to shift dimensions and the two universes are fighting to control the chaos. Meanwhile back on an Earth, cities around the world are under attack from something big, and destructive.

The general concept of the film takes something a little convoluted and tries to fit it into something that makes sense, in this instance the case of a multi-verse and the chaos created when they merge is simplified by turning the film into a survival movie where the astronauts had to get home. The problem arises when a lot of what was happening, seemed to just happen for the sake of happening.

For the record there’s no full-blown answer to the why of everything just yet, no confirmation on where the monsters or the aliens are from or even what the hell any of it means; that I can deal with, the fact that these movies are written after the fact has me believing that we probably won’t ever get a definitive answer. What bothers me about this film is that the horror aspect of this sci-fi horror is dictated solely by the rule of the screenwriter, they try to pass it off with the multi-verse angle to say ‘Oh weird shit is happening’ but that can only go so far, when you’ve dealt with people appearing from nowhere in the middle of an engine bloc, biological matter killing someone from the inside and a severed sentient arm with knowledge that neither it nor its host knew about you do get the stage where it’s difficult to take seriously anymore. If the film had any rules regarding the hows and whys of cross-universe fuckery it ignored them in favour of making the film scarier, only instead to just make it more confusing.

Does have a great end shot, I will give it that, but it’s basically fan-service since it won’t amount to anything.

Acting was alright, no-one was particularly bad but no-one was particularly great either, as is the case with every space horror movie the majority of the cast was just there for the sake of being killed later though it feels like they forgot to give the rest of them any actual development. On the crew was Russian engineer Volkov who got stressed a couple times then 3D printed a gun, Brazilian doctor Monk who said a couple prayers and looked to be the ship’s religious guy going nuts over the horrors of what he sees then doesn’t even get to be that, Chinese Tech Specialist Tam who only spoke in Mandarin and that seemed to be the only thing worthy of note about her, German engineer Schmidt who was in charge of The Sheppard programme and took a lot of the frustrations from the other crew members, and American commander Kiel who was trying to hold the crew together but every unexplained turn in the universe put him closer and closer to the edge.

I’ll give Kiel some leeway, he’s played by David Oyelowo and aside from the stupidity of his final scene he was actually quite good with a lot of commanding presence mixed with confused hurt when he started to wonder if he could trust his own crew. The rest of them though really struggled to make an impact and even with the prerequisite ‘Space Horror Victim’ syndrome some of the most boring character are the ones that survive the longest.

The main players of the film were Mundy, Ava and Jensen; actually Mundy isn’t a main player but I want to bring him up anyway, played by Chris O’Dowd who is a comic actor I’ve enjoyed in stuff like I.T. Crowd but he’s completely miscast here, or more appropriately the character was written really poorly. Mundy is suppose to be the comic-relief, the one to ease the tension of some of the more intense scenes, but every time something intense is happening Mundy just has to say some dull one-liner and kills any mood the film is trying to create, even when he’s the one in the middle of the tension.

Elizabeth Debicki played Jensen, a mysterious member of the crew who comes crashing in with one of the film’s more disturbing sequences. I’m not spoiling anything by saying she’s the villain, one look at her and you know she’s some ice-cold bitch, but to the film’s credit the reasoning for her villainy are good if not totally unique. Her reveal should’ve been a little earlier to allow her more time to be the bitch we clocked her as from moment one.

The film is partially saved by Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ava Hamilton, the stations’ communication officer still reeling from the death of her children and her guilt over their passing. While at first she uses the station as a means of escaping the arrival of Jensen and a second Earth puts her in an awkward position with an even more awkward question about how to approach the mission from here-on-out. Like Jensen this wasn’t a totally original character but Raw’s emotional performance is what sold it well, she felt like the only character allowed to actually be human and her final goodbye message is strong stuff because of her.

Oh, and Ava’s husband takes care of the gracelessly shoved in... I mean the earth portions of the film trying to protect a little girl from a monster’s rampage. And that’s all that needs to be on either of them.

The film is directed by Julius Onah, whose only previous work was a forgettable thriller flick from 2015, and to things into perspective, the best aspect of this film was the shock-marketing during the Super Bowl though in hindsight that could’ve been an excuse to get as many people watching it as possible before they realises it was a misfire. The film starts off well with some slow-building tension thanks to the question of what’s happened to Earth and some actually quite shocking moments including Jensen’s arrival and an explosion of worms, the film sets itself up well for some fucked-up shit but it fails to follow through. As soon as one of the characters loses a limb to a really rubbery looking metal wall the film struggles to find its footing again and it’s just more questions raised by how little the film is actually trying to make its own concept work.

While Jensen is the villain the main antagonist is actually the multi-verse fuckery that’s causing all this unexplained shit to happen but as previously mentioned a lot of it just happens to happen. The lack of a real, tangible villain until way too late in the film robs it of any suspense, when the unexplained can just happen there’s no build-up, no sense of danger or fear because the characters can’t prepare themselves against sheer dumb luck and the lack of even trying to explain it all hurts the film as a whole. Again I wasn’t expecting a full-on explanation of the Cloverfield franchise, but I feel some more grounding in its own quantum concept might have served the film better.

Although perhaps no connection at all would’ve also helped.

Only time will tell if The Cloverfield Paradox is a misstep for the franchise or the first fall in a series of failures, I’ve still no idea why Abrams decided to continue the Cloverfield storyline or why he’s repurposing existing stories to do so but he is and it’s currently 50/50 on how they turned out. As much as I’ve criticised the film I can’t say it’s objectively bad; the story had a solid concept but struggled with the execution, aside from Mundy’s one-liners the cast performed well despite underwritten characters and Raw and Debicki made the most with what they had, even Onah’s direction it’s some decent thrill moments in the first half before the film lost track of what it was doing. Being bad and being forgettable are two different things and Cloverfield Paradox is the latter, it’s just not interesting enough or confident enough to pull off a multi-verse theory and the whole thing falls apart as a result. I’ll still be there for Overlord to see how this franchise is shaping up but if this is the shape of things to come then I won’t feel bad if I turn away.

5/10