The Cloverfield Paradox is a special movie to say the least.
Between its production history, marketing campaign, and the actual film itself, there’s a lot to be discussed. For those unfamiliar with The Cloverfield franchise, it’s like the film equivalent of Black Mirror, but it all centers around the idea of aliens. 2008’s Cloverfield was a found-footage movie from the perspective of an average New Yorker during a monster attack. It had an immensely cryptic marketing campaign that involved everything from trailers with no titles to websites for fake companies. Then, in 2016, 10 Cloverfield Lane was announced and a trailer was released on the same day, only three months before the film. It also took on a complex marketing campaign, and 10 Cloverfield Lane was even better than the original. The character driven film, 10 Cloverfield Lane, is centered around two people trapped in a bunker, being told by a strange man that they’re being kept safe from the aliens outside. The movie provides an entirely different take on a traditional alien invasion film. The Cloverfield Paradox was released on Netflix after being announced on a Super Bowl TV spot that same day.
And that’s the only way it stays faithful to the franchise.
The Cloverfield Paradox abandons the idea of a character driven story and having an anthology series. Its non-existent character development and attempts to tie all of the movies together in a very contrived way leaves much to be desired. The more I sat through The Cloverfield Paradox, the more it became apparent that 1) this was meant to be a theatrical release, and 2) this wasn’t even meant to be a Cloverfield movie. All ties to the idea of Cloverfield were hashed together very haphazardly, in what seemed like last minute reshoots. Not to mention, its entire plotline goes nowhere and is in no way rewarding. But that’s everyone’s problem with it: how it ties to the Cloverfield series. What surprises me is how everyone doesn’t have issues with the film itself.
The Cloverfield Paradox isn’t bad enough to make me angry- it’s worse. It’s bad to the point that I’m baffled. It actively goes against conventions that even people with the lowest understanding of film understand. It starts with an aggressively boring opening, centered around a couple, stuck in traffic, discussing the Earth’s energy crisis… Did I mention this movie is space thriller? What a way to start it. Once we do get to the space station that the movie takes place on, however, the story kicks off immediately. That doesn’t sound bad, but it is. Everything is so rushed. In fact, the film’s entire predicament is revealed by a newscaster in the background of an testing preparations. The Cloverfield Paradox doesn’t even set time aside to give the problem the characters face a proper introduction. Oh, and “characters” is a term I use lightly. The only thing that keeps them from all being the same, boring cast are lousy, half-baked motivations that you may not even learn until halfway through the film. Expect enough forced comedic relief to fill a Marvel movie twice over. Because of this, the viewer feels nothing when seeing these people struggle. But you know the film wants you to, because the movie’s over dramatic shore will chime in whenever something supposedly emotional happens. The movie doesn’t care about its characters either, it just uses them as plot point and cheap entertainment, only to kill them off, one by one.
The only thing that keeps The Cloverfield Paradox from being excruciatingly painful is its quick pacing and the fact that it’s built off of some interesting concepts. Unfortunately, it has the worst execution of those concepts we could imagine. The Cloverfield Paradox is a 2 out of 10.
★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆