The Cloverfield Paradox

photo courtesy of collider.com

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     The Cloverfield Paradox, the third movie in the unorthodox Cloverfield franchise, makes its surprise debut on Netflix this week. Since the release of the original Cloverfield back in 2008, the series has become something of a weird cousin to Black Mirror; each installment tells a different science-fiction/horror story set in the same monster-plagued dystopian reality. Cloverfield Paradox is a nice catch for Netflix, who nabbed the distribution rights after the movie’s theater release date was shifted around several times. But what could have been a high-profile, major franchise release ends up feeling more like a direct-to-DVD sequel, because The Cloverfield Paradox drops the ball in a big way.

     Paradox follows a group of scientists aboard a futuristic space age sometime in the future. As society on Earth begins to collapse due to diminishing energy reserves, the scientists (including Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Ava) are testing a volatile energy source known as the Shepard particle accelerator. When one test goes awry, the scientists soon discover that energy is the least of their problems: the very fabric of reality begins to unwind around them. Unless they can find a way to reverse the process, the fate of the space station—and the entire Earth—looks grim.

photo courtesy of ilcineocchio.it

     Truth be told, Cloverfield has always been something of a tenuous basis for a franchise. Plenty of monster-invasion/disaster movies come and go without making a splash. 10 Cloverfield Lane, the second in the series, seemed to justify its own existence by breaking the mold, combining compelling character drama with a fresh spin on the horror movie formula. The Cloverfield Paradox is essentially the opposite: where there should be surprise and reinvention, there’s stale, recycled ideas deflated by poor execution. It might suffice for a one-time viewing if you’re a genre fan and subscribe to Netflix, but that’s about as far as a recommendation can go.

     There are traces of good ideas all over Cloverfield Paradox, but it just can’t scrape up with anything clever enough to deliver on its premise. Most of the moments that work, whether scary, funny, or generally unsettling, are blatantly borrowed from other sources (most notably Alien). Without anything exceptionally memorable of its own, Cloverfield Paradox can’t build any of the tension or momentum necessary to get audiences invested in these scientists.

photo courtesy of collider.com

     The movie suffers from slipshod execution on almost every front. There’s not enough time devoted to characterization, so Ava, the movie’s primary protagonist, stays at a distance for most of the runtime. The dialogue never quite lands, and at times it’s hard to tell how much of the blame belongs to bad writing and how much to bad editing. As for the horror at the movie’s forefront, the scares are so random, so chaotic, and often so silly that many of them produce as much confusion as they do genuine dismay. And when the time comes for an explanation of Paradox’s mysterious central conceit, it feels like the movie intends for the revelation to be a twist… despite having made it obvious through a barrage of clunky exposition.

photo courtesy of cnn.com

     But for all its narrative faults, Paradox does have some merit. Like each of its predecessors, Paradox builds a distinctive visual atmosphere. Here, it’s sort of a mash-up between classic Alien claustrophobia and J.J. Abram’s shiny Star Trek-verse, an interesting visual clash that feels at home in the blue-gray Cloverfield world. It’s also worth mentioning that the plot picks up toward the end, when the movie’s heady sci-fi gives way to more satisfying, straightforward action/thriller beats. Ava’s character, though thinly drawn, enjoys a few pay-offs in the final scenes that make her feel more like the protagonist she was intended to be—even if it’s a bit too late to muster anything as engaging as Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character in 10 Cloverfield Lane.

     FINAL VERDICT: A surprising release mechanism is the only surprising thing about The Cloverfield Paradox, which squanders its premise with contrived stakes and major creative missteps. 

Watch the trailer here. 

photo courtesy of techcrunch.com