The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)
Orbiting a planet on the brink of war, scientists
test a device to solve an energy crisis, and end up face-to-face with a
dark alternate reality.
Director:
Julius OnahStars:
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
4 February 2018 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
God Particle See more »Filming Locations:
Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA See more »Box Office
Budget:
$26,000,000 (estimated)Company Credits
Production Co:
Let's go out on a limb and predict that February 4, 2018 will be seen
as a watershed moment in the history of moving pictures. That was the
Super Bowl Sunday when Netflix released the third entry in the popular "Cloverfield"
series of science-fiction thrillers—not to theaters, or even with a
traditional long-lead buildup to online release, but simply by
announcing that it was available that night, by way of an ad that ran
during the game itself. Then the service sat back and watched social
media light up with near-live reviews by people who were more interested
in a new sci-fi film than in the game. By the following morning,
reviews like this one started to appear, asking what it all meant—not
the movie, mind you, but the implications of releasing it this way.
Turns out there were two masterstrokes here, and they were both
about advertising. One was announcing what was, in essence, little more
than a new Netflix menu selection during the telecast of North America's
most-watched sporting event, guaranteeing that tens of millions of
viewers would at least consider checking it out that night. The other
masterstroke was figuring out how to generate excitement for a movie
that might've barely made an impression had it been released in a more
typical manner. "The Cloverfield Paradox" is a bit of a scam job,
promising to reconcile entries in a series that have little in common
save for a shared genre. It fizzles so badly at the end that you might
legitimately wonder if it ever had anything to do with the other two
films in the first place, or if it was produced independently of the
series and retroactively added.
Directed by Julius Onah and written by Oren Uziel,
the film is set during a horrendous dystopian future in which the power
grid keeps failing and the Russians are pondering a land invasion of
the United Kingdom. Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Hamilton, a scientist who leaves her doctor husband Michael (Roger Davies)
on Earth to join the multinational, multi-ethnic crew of an orbital
collider that's supposed to fire up and solve the world's energy
problems.
Complications ensue, obviously: they're up there
for quite a long time, and their actions somehow remove them from
existence in their original reality and deposit them somewhere else,
maybe on an alternate timeline. The relationships between people are
subtly different, as are their own personal histories. People who should
know each other don't, etc. Meanwhile, back on the original Earth,
Michael wonders what happened to his wife and the space station where
she once worked, and gets embroiled in a parallel adventure protecting a
young girl from various threats, one of which might be making a cameo
from another "Cloverfield" film.
Hamilton's colleagues in orbit include such ace character actors as Daniel Oyelowo, Chris O'Dowd, Daniel Bruhl, Aksel Hennie and Zhang Ziyi
(speaking entirely in Chinese with subtitles, a nice touch).
Frustratingly generic character writing ensures that none of them makes a
strong impression, although the movie does use Hennie's chararacter, a
paranoid Russian, as a human hand grenade, rather like the Michael Biehn
character in "The Abyss," and wisely gives O'Dowd most of the comic
relief lines, which he sells but never oversells (his reaction to a
moment of stomach-churning body horror is Bill Paxton-worthy).
Onah is a nimble and confident director, jumping right into the
middle of action, giving the sci-fi vistas (in particular the orbital
platform, which spins like a multilayered gyroscope) appropriately
grandiose introductions, lingering on beautiful people and objects just
because they're beautiful, and observing intriguing little details of
production design (such as a faux-bagel that assembles itself in a
kitchen contraption, and a tube of liquid metal sealant that works like a
caulk gun). It's an offhand style that's characteristic of post-"Alien"
science fiction, where we're more awestruck by the world onscreen than
any of the characters are. There are other compensatory pleasures,
including the refreshingly straightforward and comprehensible
photography by Dan Mindel (who shot the first two J.J. Abrams "Star Trek"
movies, far more flashily) and Bear McCreary's music, which is
reminiscent of Elliot Goldenthal's majestically bummed out score for
"Alien 3" and adds about $10 million to the film's budget by daring to
sound big.
But for the most part, this is a bust of a movie,
the kind that would probably have otherwise gotten dumped to theaters
in January by a studio looking to cut its losses. And it makes the
series feel not like an anthology but a brand name guaranteeing
medium-budget genre action with a bit more intelligence than was
probably necessary but nowhere near the aesthetic ambition required to
really stand out. The second "Cloverfield" entry, "10 Cloverfield Lane,"
was a medium-budget art-house sci-fi film, the kind that might've
shocked everyone in the '80s by making a fortune at drive-ins and strip
malls; it became a hit on the basis of its ensemble acting and its
unnerving intimacy—never mind that ending, which confirmed that it was
taking place in a different universe from the first "Cloverfield," a
homegrown American answer to a "Godzilla" movie. This one cobbles
together scraps from the "Alien" series, "Event Horizon,"
"Final Destination, "Solaris" and about a dozen other films, doing a
creditable job of seeming as if it has a lot on its mind until the
moment arrives (soon into the film, alas) when you realize it doesn't.
J.J.
Abrams, whose name is on the film as a producer, perfected the
so-called "mystery box" method of storytelling that promises profound
and shattering revelations only to pivot to bromides like, "We should
all be nicer to each other" or "Let's learn to forgive ourselves." The
script to this one falls well within that wheelhouse. I'd like to visit
the alternate universe where "The Cloverfield Paradox" is worthy of the
stroke of PR genius that launched it.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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