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

Cloverfield (2008) is in my top 10 movies of all time.

A movie that throws a handheld and city-destroying-monster genre together and leaves you with a feeling of, 'oh .. shit, what happened, and how to proceed ?! How did this happen ?! ".

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) is a sequel and a completely different type of movie that I did not expect, and worked well in my opinion to expand the Cloverfield universe.

And now The Cloverfield Paradox (2018).

Man, man, man, what a disaster. This movie tries to be everything at once, (Alien (1979), Event Horizon (1997), Sunshine (2007), Pandorum (2009), Interstellar (2014) but fails on all fronts.

The script steals from a dozen other (better) movies, and therefore gets itself in a vortex of clichés, exposition and bad, very bad dialogue.

Acting is below average and only Daniel Brühl is at least trying.

Instead of full fledged characters, you are treated to characters that consist of nothing more than an accent, a nationality, cliché dialogue and familiar archetypes including The Funny One (Chris O'Dowd), The Antagonist (Aksel Hennie), and The Stoic Leader (David Oyelowo) that change their views within 3 seconds purely for plot-conveniences.

The tone of this movie is all over the place, one moment you are expected to cry, and in the next shot someone is laughing because he lost a limb. The movie takes itself too serious on the one side and ends up with misplaced humor on the other.

There are few movies where I have felt so uninvolved with one or more characters. When a certain emotion is forced on you, you're not doing your work correctly as a writer when you should instead give reasons and motivations why I should sympathize with a character,.

The mystery of Cloverfield which after 10 years still keeps me busy every now and then is certainly razed to the ground and I recommend that everyone who appreciates Cloverfield (2008) to skip this B-movie-monstrosity. Save yourself from a disappointment.

Bah.