Another installment in the uneven anthology series that started with Godzilla via found footage, then continued with a Hitchcockian subterranean nightmare, and now dovetails into an 'Alien' clone that tries to tie all these (clearly) disparate movies into one universe. And this is the fundamental flaw of 'The Cloverfield Paradox', it never feels like its own story, merely just a retcon intended to open up the franchise to more installments with the brand name attached.
I think everyone can admit that the cast for this film is absolutely stunning. You have several hot property Oscar-caliber stars with some sought-after character actors to back them up... and Chris O'Dowd. What exactly attracted names like Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo and Daniel Brühl to this project (other than money) is so far beyond my comprehension that we could in fact be living in our own Cloverfield parallel universe. Their characters are either walking plot ciphers or basic horror movie fodder with no discernible differences between them other than their nationalities and simplistic emotional pallets (i.e. anger or fear). The script from 'Paranormal Activity' creator Oren Uziel could easily be a 20 year old first time screenwriter's attempt at knocking out a sci-fi thriller and has the dialogue to match. To be fair to Uziel, he does have the daunting task of trying to both expand upon and tie together all these different films, but winds up throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. There are too many ideas flying around that do not hold together cohesively enough to work, or even make sense, when all we needed was just a simple story with a clear and defined trajectory - the one trait the previous films shared in common the most.
Furthermore, the production looks disappointingly cheap. Compare the stagey production design to that of Danny Boyle's tremendous 'Sunshine' and this suddenly begins to look like a Syfy Channel original. I can totally understand how this bypassed cinemas and went straight to Netflix because had I been the distributor (in this case Paramount), I'd have taken one look at the final cut and cringed with embarrassment (and possibly died from shame). Perhaps director Julius Onah is going for that sci-fi B-feature feeling, in which case the film is a complete success because it most certainly is B-grade. It's just a shame it takes down an A-list cast with it. That's not to say that the film is not enjoyable on these terms because it most certainly is - if you like monster movies and 'Alien' rip-offs - but you have to buy into the core concept of what JJ Abrams and co are trying to do, which is to cynically reverse engineer a mythology based on a 10 year old found footage monster flick so they can launch the 'Cloverfield' multi-verse.
The thing is, 'Cloverfield' was nothing more than a viral marketing campaign in search of a better movie, while '10 Cloverfield Lane' was a really good thriller that would have been better served as a standalone story. So 'The Cloverfield Paradox' was somewhat doomed to fail in many ways. That said, there is enough fun to be had with the increasingly bonkers plot and spotting all the ham-fisted attempts at mythology building to almost make it a guilty pleasure. Almost.
I think everyone can admit that the cast for this film is absolutely stunning. You have several hot property Oscar-caliber stars with some sought-after character actors to back them up... and Chris O'Dowd. What exactly attracted names like Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo and Daniel Brühl to this project (other than money) is so far beyond my comprehension that we could in fact be living in our own Cloverfield parallel universe. Their characters are either walking plot ciphers or basic horror movie fodder with no discernible differences between them other than their nationalities and simplistic emotional pallets (i.e. anger or fear). The script from 'Paranormal Activity' creator Oren Uziel could easily be a 20 year old first time screenwriter's attempt at knocking out a sci-fi thriller and has the dialogue to match. To be fair to Uziel, he does have the daunting task of trying to both expand upon and tie together all these different films, but winds up throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. There are too many ideas flying around that do not hold together cohesively enough to work, or even make sense, when all we needed was just a simple story with a clear and defined trajectory - the one trait the previous films shared in common the most.
Furthermore, the production looks disappointingly cheap. Compare the stagey production design to that of Danny Boyle's tremendous 'Sunshine' and this suddenly begins to look like a Syfy Channel original. I can totally understand how this bypassed cinemas and went straight to Netflix because had I been the distributor (in this case Paramount), I'd have taken one look at the final cut and cringed with embarrassment (and possibly died from shame). Perhaps director Julius Onah is going for that sci-fi B-feature feeling, in which case the film is a complete success because it most certainly is B-grade. It's just a shame it takes down an A-list cast with it. That's not to say that the film is not enjoyable on these terms because it most certainly is - if you like monster movies and 'Alien' rip-offs - but you have to buy into the core concept of what JJ Abrams and co are trying to do, which is to cynically reverse engineer a mythology based on a 10 year old found footage monster flick so they can launch the 'Cloverfield' multi-verse.
The thing is, 'Cloverfield' was nothing more than a viral marketing campaign in search of a better movie, while '10 Cloverfield Lane' was a really good thriller that would have been better served as a standalone story. So 'The Cloverfield Paradox' was somewhat doomed to fail in many ways. That said, there is enough fun to be had with the increasingly bonkers plot and spotting all the ham-fisted attempts at mythology building to almost make it a guilty pleasure. Almost.