Review of The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) by Allan C — 19 Feb 2018

Netflix has made a name for themselves by creating smart, well crafted content, but I'm hoping they don't start taking advantage of their good name by releasing Hollywood castoffs like "The Cloverfield Paradox.

" With a surprise announcement during the Super Bowl, the film unexpectedly premiered following the game, instead of the originally planned early summer theatrical release. The loosely connect J.J.

Abrams' Cloverfield films started strong with the first film taking the found footage horror subgenera and upped the ante by making what was essentially a found footage Godzilla film (and did it quite well).

The second film, "10 Cloverfield Lane," was not advertised as being affiliated with the first Cloverfield film, but had a surprising conclusion that tied the two films together. This sequel was even better than the first film as a claustrophobic and suspenseful thriller about Mary Elizabeth Winstead being "rescued" by John Goodman and held captive in his underground bunker in order to protect her from some sort of disaster that he claims has happened out in the outside world.

This third film was the first to be marketed as being part of a franchise, but it really doesn't connect all that much with the first two. Instead, it's pretty much a retread of any dozen of other better space thrillers.

The story has an international crew experimenting with dangerous new energy sources that end up taking them to an alternate universe where world war three is going on, as well as other strange anomalies onboard their ship.

The film borrows everywhere from "Alien" to "Evil Dead" to an number of other tired space films involving dangerous space walks, airlocks getting shut at the last moment, and just about every other space film cliche you can think of.

In terms of production value (photography, music, production design, special effects, etc.) it's a competently made production. Director Julius Onah takes the story through it's paces, and the cast ably acquits themselves as admirably.

The real culprit for this film's downfall is the script, which is riddled with cliches, has a dearth of any interesting sci-fi ideas (an average episode Star Trek is vastly more original than this), and offers no real character development and instead populating the film with space movie archetypes (you know, the serious main character, the adversarial jerk character, the comic relief character, the romantic couple, etc.

). Overall, despite an able cast and solid production values, this film is an incredibly unoriginal and boring space story you've seen a hundred times before.