Review of The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) by Mcgillotine — 05 Feb 2018

Cloverfield (2008) was enjoyable film in it's own right, 10 Cloverfield Lane was Genius, and The Cloverfield Paradox is a complete and utter mess. Once again tooting the name of the lense flare God JJ Abrams as a producer, and holding an estimated 26 million dollar budget, there is really no excuse for The Cloverfield Paradox to be such a sh*tty film, yet the films director Julius Onah, makes it look all too effortless.

Prior to being bought out by Neflix, The Cloverfield Paradox was held in development hell by it's original distributer, Paramount pictures, at The time many questioned this decision by Paramount considering the surprising success of 10 Cloverfield lane two years.

Cut to present day and the decision by Paramount seems all too logical as The Cloverfield Paradox, suffers from plot holes, pacing errors, bad plot decisions, boring characters, and a predictable story among other things.

Starting in the not to distant future, but not the future, because Cloverfield takes place in 2008, so not to distant past I guess, a group of scientist decide it would be a great idea to manipulate the space time continuum, what ensures is a bunch of wacky hijinks that don't add up or make any sense leading to death, death and more needlessly stupid death.

To put it simply this movie left me frustrated, 5 minutes in my head hurt, and after 30 minutes I wanted it to stop, surprisingly enough this film isn't that long at 102 minutes, but i'll be damned if I didn't feel every last minute.

The cast is also heavy underutilized, Daniel Bruhl, Chris O'Dowd and Gugu Mbatha-Raw are good actors and they show at times how good they could have been in this film. But some seriously awful dialogue and confusing story choices make their effort go to naught with frequent incompetence by the films director who shows he has no idea what to do in a film let alone with 26 million.

I would continue this review however everything I say will just become repetitious, the are far too many bad decisions in this film and it fails in almost every degree.