{no spoilers here - I know the Cloverfield drill}
Cloverfield has always been less a franchise than a multimedia event, thriving on surprise and unpredictability into the closest thing the 21st century has enjoyed to a thinly linked Twilight Zone. Case in point: a promising, albeit inauspicious sci-fi thriller 'God Particle' mysteriously unveiled as a Chapter III no one had been waiting for, but everyone proved excited for. Then: the ante was upped again, with an unprecedented day-of announcement that the film would be spontaneously released on Netflix on February 4th, over two months prior to its announced theatrical release date. Surprise! Sadly, for all of the furious rush and smoke and mirrors heralding its release, The Cloverfield Paradox is less paradoxical and more promising first draft - an energetic, engaging, and thrillingly tense sci-fi caper that proves disconcertingly hollow within, and the first Cloverfilm to fall short of its ratcheted up expectations.
In fact, Cloverthree-ld's primary paradox is how a such a fundamentally messy film can be, at once, so neatly proficient and accomplished in its telling. Boasting airtight direction by Julius Onah, impressively credible FX, crisp cinematography channelling a Ridley Scott Alien vibe, counterpointing the sweeping vastness of space and claustrophobic confines of a ship therein, and a robust, gleefully old-fashioned Bernard Herrmann-esq score by 10 Cloverfield Lane vet Bear McReary, it's a cracking ride, full of shocking twists, inventively gruesome visuals, and festering suspicions. The space station's international cast even wink at thematically functioning as a 'faux-UN in space,' flirting with just enough superficial sociopolitical tension without becoming tiresomely didactic. All this, and nary a trace of nauseating shaky-cam in sight (that's, like, so Cloverfield I, m'kay)!
But, post-film, by the time you grumpily interrupt Netflix from cueing an unwanted recommendation mid-credits, reality rears its monstrous head, with a persistent and ever-growing "Heyyyy, wait a minute...!" After gasping at the film's barrage of shocking happenstances, we're retroactively left with the buzzkill of picking up the pieces of all the (many) dangling, unresolved plot threads. With plot holes pockmarking the film like craters on the moon, and leaning on some of the wonkiest faux-convenient movie science in years, it's a film that reeks of a bold, fully-realized start perhaps particle-accelerated into being a bit prematurely.
And the culprit? Methinks the claw marks of a Bad Robot are abound here. Despite the name, mystique, and hype of being a surprise franchise-building, linking the-artist-formerly-known-as-God-Particle to the Cloverfield universe feels like somewhat of a clumsy, unnecessary retrofit, with hurried last minute rewrites (including some garish, eye-roll-worthy exposition) perhaps explaining the synergy of such a careful telling of such a careless plot. Still, even the internal logic clamours with red flags (none the least being the crew's magical, unexplained bilingualism, conversing perfectly fluidly in English with Zhang Ziyi's staunchly Mandarin-speaking engineer, more clumsy Hollywood convenience than utopic futuristic multilingualism), which increasingly threaten to distract from the spooky fun.
Thankfully, the excellent ensemble cast help carry a lot of the slack. They're given uniformly slim characterizations, but play them to the hilt, generating reliably terse, engrossing performances, particularly leads Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Daniel Brühl, and Roger Davies. Finally, although it sometimes seems like he's popped his head in from an adjacent movie, the always wonderful Chris O'Dowd remains a welcome repository of irreverently grim comic relief throughout.
It's genuinely rare and exciting to see a big-studio franchise play with expectation and delivery with such glee as Cloverfield, which is why the careless muddle of Paradox, mindlessly entertaining though it is, feels like a disconcerting step back. With any luck, there's life yet in the Cloverfuture, and that Abrams and co. have more future shocks and left-field distribution strategies up their cinematic sleeves. Let's just hope the shock of unfinished, baldly inconclusive faux-franchise scripts takes its place, along with dear shaky-cam, firmly in the annals of history.
-5.5/10
Cloverfield has always been less a franchise than a multimedia event, thriving on surprise and unpredictability into the closest thing the 21st century has enjoyed to a thinly linked Twilight Zone. Case in point: a promising, albeit inauspicious sci-fi thriller 'God Particle' mysteriously unveiled as a Chapter III no one had been waiting for, but everyone proved excited for. Then: the ante was upped again, with an unprecedented day-of announcement that the film would be spontaneously released on Netflix on February 4th, over two months prior to its announced theatrical release date. Surprise! Sadly, for all of the furious rush and smoke and mirrors heralding its release, The Cloverfield Paradox is less paradoxical and more promising first draft - an energetic, engaging, and thrillingly tense sci-fi caper that proves disconcertingly hollow within, and the first Cloverfilm to fall short of its ratcheted up expectations.
In fact, Cloverthree-ld's primary paradox is how a such a fundamentally messy film can be, at once, so neatly proficient and accomplished in its telling. Boasting airtight direction by Julius Onah, impressively credible FX, crisp cinematography channelling a Ridley Scott Alien vibe, counterpointing the sweeping vastness of space and claustrophobic confines of a ship therein, and a robust, gleefully old-fashioned Bernard Herrmann-esq score by 10 Cloverfield Lane vet Bear McReary, it's a cracking ride, full of shocking twists, inventively gruesome visuals, and festering suspicions. The space station's international cast even wink at thematically functioning as a 'faux-UN in space,' flirting with just enough superficial sociopolitical tension without becoming tiresomely didactic. All this, and nary a trace of nauseating shaky-cam in sight (that's, like, so Cloverfield I, m'kay)!
But, post-film, by the time you grumpily interrupt Netflix from cueing an unwanted recommendation mid-credits, reality rears its monstrous head, with a persistent and ever-growing "Heyyyy, wait a minute...!" After gasping at the film's barrage of shocking happenstances, we're retroactively left with the buzzkill of picking up the pieces of all the (many) dangling, unresolved plot threads. With plot holes pockmarking the film like craters on the moon, and leaning on some of the wonkiest faux-convenient movie science in years, it's a film that reeks of a bold, fully-realized start perhaps particle-accelerated into being a bit prematurely.
And the culprit? Methinks the claw marks of a Bad Robot are abound here. Despite the name, mystique, and hype of being a surprise franchise-building, linking the-artist-formerly-known-as-God-Particle to the Cloverfield universe feels like somewhat of a clumsy, unnecessary retrofit, with hurried last minute rewrites (including some garish, eye-roll-worthy exposition) perhaps explaining the synergy of such a careful telling of such a careless plot. Still, even the internal logic clamours with red flags (none the least being the crew's magical, unexplained bilingualism, conversing perfectly fluidly in English with Zhang Ziyi's staunchly Mandarin-speaking engineer, more clumsy Hollywood convenience than utopic futuristic multilingualism), which increasingly threaten to distract from the spooky fun.
Thankfully, the excellent ensemble cast help carry a lot of the slack. They're given uniformly slim characterizations, but play them to the hilt, generating reliably terse, engrossing performances, particularly leads Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Daniel Brühl, and Roger Davies. Finally, although it sometimes seems like he's popped his head in from an adjacent movie, the always wonderful Chris O'Dowd remains a welcome repository of irreverently grim comic relief throughout.
It's genuinely rare and exciting to see a big-studio franchise play with expectation and delivery with such glee as Cloverfield, which is why the careless muddle of Paradox, mindlessly entertaining though it is, feels like a disconcerting step back. With any luck, there's life yet in the Cloverfuture, and that Abrams and co. have more future shocks and left-field distribution strategies up their cinematic sleeves. Let's just hope the shock of unfinished, baldly inconclusive faux-franchise scripts takes its place, along with dear shaky-cam, firmly in the annals of history.
-5.5/10