Review of The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) by Davidwashere — 08 Feb 2018

While there are people that dislike this movie because of it failing to connect the past two Cloverfield films together who are outside of the original marketing for the first film back in 2008, almost ten years ago, my complaint with this movie is that on it's own it's not very good.

The acting ranges from great to just okay, with the standout being Gugu Mbatha-Raw, but that is because she has the most material to work with, everyone else is basically a stock horror cliché when it comes with close containment horror like the Mist, the Thing, and the first Alien film.

But that would imply that this movie is scary at all. It does have scares, stock scares, but instead it is just a jumbled film that shifts between different story elements while also connecting to the previous films within the Cloverfield films.

From stock horror tropes, to sci-fi thriller, to the "levity" that comes from a misplaced Chris O'Dowd, the movie has no idea what it wants to be and devolves into a tepid slog of different narrative elements that are crammed into one horrid Frankenstein monster with expendable characters that you don't really care much about.

The production design is pretty great, but that doesn't save a sloppy script.