The Cloverfield Paradox

That rascal J.J Abrams sure does like to pull a fast one on us. Following the lead of the previous entry in this loosely connected series, 10 Cloverfield Lane (which had a trailer release just a couple months before the surprise release of the film), the crew over at Bad Robot not only premiered the trailer for the newest entry during the big game last night...they premiered the movie on Netflix right after the game. At this rate, I expect Cloverfield 4 will just randomly show up in my mail one day like a sample of Tide. But the question remains, was The Cloverfield Paradox any good? Yeah, actually it was. 

A group of scientists are occupying a space station over Earth in the not so distant future working on a dangerous experiment that could potentially create a new and infinite power source for a resource depleted Earth. The group consists of scientists from around the world, including Hamilton (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw), Kiel (played by David Oyelowo), Schmidt (played by Daniel Bruhl), Mundy (played by Chris O'Dowd), Tam (played by Ziyi Zhang), Volkov (played by Aksel Hennie) and Monk (played by John Ortiz). There have been warnings within the scientific community that firing this device could have catastrophic consequences, including ripping apart the fabric of space itself. When the team does just that, it leads to horrifying and unforeseen circumstances not only on the space station but on the planet Earth below. 

That's all I'm going to reveal about the plot. Part of the charm of watching this film was being able to enjoy it with very little lead up aside from that quick trailer that aired during the Super Bowl. I was able to enjoy the film in the purest sense as I allowed the film to unfold before me without knowing what exactly was going to happen next. It a world where it seems like every big move gets at least three trailers and between the three of the them the entire movie is revealed, this was a real treat. 

The film was directed by Julius Onah from a script by Oren Uziel. For a director with not much in the way of feature filmmaking under his belt, Onah does a great job staging this space set tale and kept the tension going throughout. While the beginning starts out a little clunky with some overly expository dialogue, the film finds a decent rhythm as it goes along and the main characters are established. The plot of the film does come across as a bit of a mash-up of other Space Thriller/Survival types films, such as Interstellar, Gravity, Apollo 13, and even Event Horizon. Yet, Onah and Uziel find a way to take these plot points and give them a new and intriguing new spin. There is a part of the climax that had me rolling my eyes a bit though as it felt overly familiar to a plot point towards the end of both Interstellar and Danny Boyle's Sunshine. But aside from that, the film did a good job of keeping me on the edge of my seat and guessing as it went along. Again, it probably helped that I knew next to nothing about the film prior to watching it. The film also has a sub-plot taking place on Earth that doesn't really pay off in any meaningful way except to show Earth has been impacted by the accident on the space station as well.

The cast did a solid job with the standout being Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who I first saw in the fantastic "San Junipero" episode of Black Mirror and she continues to impress here as well as lead Scientist Hamilton. Daniel Bruhl was also a reliable stand out, bringing his usual stoic seriousness to his role as well. Chris O'Dowd brings the comic relief to the film as a character I really rather liked in the film. This wonderfully diverse cast as a whole gives their roles their own and no one is just there for a paycheck, or at least it doesn't feel like it. There isn't much of a character arc for them aside from figuring out what happened when they fired the particle accelerator, how to fix it and how to survive in the meantime. And that kind of worked for me actually. It always drives me crazy when characters stop in a critical time to have a "character moment." Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "Uh, you all don't have time for this." 

 Part of my enthusiasm for The Cloverfield Paradox might be how it was released. Surprise trailer during the Super Bowl hiding an even bigger surprise: It'll be on Netflix once the game ends. That being said, for a film that I had zero expectations for and was not even expecting to be able to watch last night, this one surprised me. It's not a revolutionary film by any means and I did have my quibbles after I came down from my nerd high and thought about it, but it is a solidly entertaining hour and forty minute Space thriller. It's hard to complain too much about that.