Review of The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) by Ethan H — 04 Feb 2018

Where to begin...

I was excited when they announced the prequel to J.J Abrams' "Cloverfield." I watched it almost as soon as it was released and I must say that I was very disappointed in it. To me, only 1% of what the film composed of was original, the rest felt like "Interstellar" mated with "Alien" and produced something worse than "Troll 2." Don't get me wrong, I liked the first two "Cloverfield" films, but this made me want to find Abrams and ask what the heck was he thinking. Instead of me full on bashing this, lets do some good old Good Vs. Bad.

Good: There were some interesting points in the plot of the film such as the play on the multiverse and how their machine could affect them. I thought the acting was up to par. It wasn't stellar, but it wasn't bad. For me this is good, but the run time of the film. Had it been a minute longer, I would have been turned off due to it's slow pace. Finally, the shot composition was substantial. Since it takes place in space, I liked how they played with the position of the camera and focus on the characters. I like how I finally saw the monster. That is the only reason why I'm glad I watched it til the end.

Now for my favorite part about this film...

BAD: The first 45-60 minutes of the film, I had a crap ton of questions that distracted me from what was going on and this was a huge turn off for me regarding the film. I still am a bit puzzled as to why and how this machine could power Earth while in space... like where is it getting the power they are seeing on their radars? The film had plenty of parts that were so slow and irrelevant that I wanted to fast forward the film, but I didn't and I regret it. I felt like there were only one or two characters fully developed, yet it had a cast of 7 and it felt like they slapped down the remaining 5 without any explanation. Yes, they were critical to the project but it didn't give them reasoning behind their actions. The film dragged on and it felt like the writers had very little they wanted to accomplish but wanted to pass a 90 minute run time. That is the biggest thing about the film that made me not like it, it was it's lack of events and respect towards the "Cloverfield" franchise. I find this to be nothing more than a disappointment to the saga.

All in all, watch at your own risk, I found this film to be, not only disappointing, but unnecessary. J.J Abrams could have easily explained how the monsters got there in a 10 minute interview instead of making a 107 minute film full of, "WTH is even happening.".

My Consensus:

'The Cloverfield Paradox" may bring some interesting plot points to the table, but it isn't enough to counteract it's lack of events, character, and feel to the "Cloverfield" saga. With it's dragged on, easy to forget story line, it's easy to say that this should be one of the last films to be made in the saga.