Review of The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) by John M — 20 Feb 2018

Do better, Netflix. So in the not so distant future, the energy crisis has reached the point where we have to take immediate action. A group of scientists from around the globe go up into space to test a powerful device that would give the Earth infinite energy, or at least it would in theory.

After many failed attempts, it finally works... but it makes the entire world disappear. What is this crew going to do? Now I don't have to tell you what a gigantic fan I am of Cloverfield, as I wear my love for it on my sleeves.

It is my favorite monster movie of all time, I have seen it at least a dozen times at this point, and every time I watch it, I am always filled with a palpable sense of dread. The surprise sequel, 10 Cloverfield Lane, was also a quality film.

You can tell that it wasn't really written to be a Cloverfield movie, but it still rose to the challenge with great actors and solid execution. The Cloverfield Paradox, on the other hand, took everybody by surprise when people watching the Super Bowl were told that they could stream the movie immediately after the game.

Let me just say that there is a reason why they chose to skip the theatrical release on this. What this will really be remembered for is not for being a Cloverfield movie, or even being a good or bad film in general, it will be remembered for the marketing experiment behind it.

To my knowledge, nothing like this has ever been attempted before, and because of that, it made it almost like this was an event that everybody could participate in if they wanted to, and it made me feel like I was a part of something.

I got an adrenaline rush as soon as I hear the news about this, because I am way more into Cloverfield than I am in to football. It's a brand to be sure, but they pulled a fast one and made it so that everybody across the country got excited to watch something that is direct-to-video quality.

It has a little bit of money behind it for special effects and a few decent actors, but honestly, those are the only things that separate it from something that would go directly to the Syfy channel, and that should tell you everything that you need to know.

To the movie's credit, I was with it when it started, and it is more ambitious than you would think. It really wants to be Lost in space, and yes, I capitalized that correctly, because I am talking about the television show Lost.

There's a lot of bizarre and concerning science fiction elements that pop up that you just have to roll with, putting your trust in the writers that there is a good explanation coming shortly. I stuck with this as long as I could, and then when it got to the hand scene, that was about when I checked out, and it was all downhill from there.

The longer this went on, the less I liked it. Much like The Phantom Menace, it reaches that point where it runs the risk of over-explaining things in the previous movies that were better left a mystery.

At the end of the day, I'm going to pretend my hardest that this movie doesn't exist. In fact, you can even say that this has very little to do with the other movies, and other than the last five seconds of the film, you could just write this off as being a separate standalone movie completely (and hoo boy, those five seconds are an eye roll and a half).

Even if you're a fan of Cloverfield, you're better off skipping this, and they are going to have to bring something stronger than just creative marketing to the table if they want this series to continue.