The Cloverfield Paradox ** ½ / *****
Directed by: Julius Onah.
Written by: Oren Uziel and Doug Jung.
Starring: Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Hamilton), David Oyelowo (Kiel), Daniel Brühl (Schmidt), John Ortiz (Monk), Chris O'Dowd (Mundy), Aksel Hennie (Volkov), Ziyi Zhang (Tam), Elizabeth Debicki (Jensen), Roger Davies (Michael), Clover Nee (Molly), Donal Logue (Mark Stambler).
Netflix’s release of The Cloverfield Paradox was a stroke of genius. We’ve known for a while that they had a Cloverfield movie as part of their upcoming slate, but no one knew when the film was going to be released, or even what it was called. Then, during the Superbowl, they had an ad for the film announcing it was “Coming Very Soon”, which meant it was going to available right after the game. The streaming giant has done a great job getting their television shows watched and talked about, but has struggled to do the same with their movie slate (for instance, I’ve seen nothing on the film On Body and Soul – an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language film, which they released last Friday – major outlets didn’t even review it). This was Netflix announcing, in the biggest, boldest possible terms that they were going BIG with this one. This movie was going to be an event. And if any franchise could support this kind of blitz attack, the Cloverfield franchise is it – they tried to keep the 2008 original film under wraps before releasing it in theaters, and didn’t even announce 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) until a few months before its release.
If only the movie lived up to that hype. The movie is competently made and acted, and certainly isn’t horrible. But it’s also far too derivative of other space films, among them the Alien franchise and Event Horizon, and hell, last year’s already forgotten (but fun) Life. Like 10 Cloverfield Lane it didn’t begin its existence as a Cloverfield film at all – but got that grafted on later. It worked brilliantly in the previous sequel (side-quel, whatever) as an intense, Hitchcock-ian thriller became an action/sci-fi film in its final moments. Here, not so much.
The basic premise is that there is a crew on The Cloverfield Space station, trying their best to solve the world’s energy crisis (which in the world of the film, has reached emergency proportions, with constant black outs, and threats of war). On board is the Shepherd Particle Accelerator, which is too dangerous to test on earth, but if they can get it working, would solve all the energy problems. The multi-national, multi-ethnic crew have been working on it for two years, and nothing to show for it, and only enough fuel for a few more attempts. Of course, they get it to work, and of course, it causes all sorts of problem – they type laid out early in the film by a paranoid maniac ranting on TV (Donal Logue) about alternate dimensions, etc.
The film is anchored by a strong cast. The main character is Hamilton (Gugu-Mbatha Raw), who left her husband on earth (but we keep returning to throughout the movie, which makes no sense, until we get to the underwhelming final scene when we finally realize his purpose) – who is grieving for her dead children, but goes up anyway. There is also Daniel Bruhl as a brilliant German scientist, who is trying to get the accelerator to work, David Oyelowo as the Captain, Zhang Ziyi (speaking only in Mandarin) who also works on the accelerator, Chris O’Dowd, there for comic relief (and, it must be said, doing a great job at that), John Ortiz as the doctor and Aksel Hennie, as an angry Russian. After all the stuff goes done, they are joined by the mysterious Jensen (Elizabeth Debicki), although no one knows who she got there. That may be a cast lacking in major star power, but certainly not one lacking in ability. They do what they can with the mostly functional dialogue – the film doesn’t give anyone other than Hamilton anything resembling an inner life.
The film is directed by Julius Onah – who like Matt Reeves and Dan Trachtenberg before him – is making his big budget debut here. He does mostly fine work. He takes his time with the film, and does a lot with the environment on board the ship. I think with a better screenplay, he could probably do good work.
But alas, the film never really has much chance of working, because everything about feels so familiar, so rehashed from other, better films. You keep thinking that something is going to happen to bring it to another level – and it never really does. I’m still exciting for future Cloverfield films – when a franchise is as diverse as this one, a single failure doesn’t mean much – but unfortunately, this time it is a failure.
