THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
When 10 Cloverfield Lane succeeded as a spiritual sequel, I was open minded for the franchise to go another direction. However when The Cloverfield Paradox began streaming on Netflix on the night of the 2018 Super Bowl, shortly after it’s only commercial premiered during the said event, I have to admit that I became underwhelmed. So bear with me as I summarize.
PLOT
The film shows a fictional 2028 where Earth is suffering from a global energy crisis. A space crew is assembled to use a particle accelerator that should provide infinity energy to Earth. The crew includes American commander Kiel (David Oyelowo), German physicist Schmidt (Daniel Brühl), Brazilian medical doctor Monk (John Ortiz), Irish engineer Mundy (Chris O’Dowd), Russian engineer Volkov (Aksel Hennie) and Chinese engineer Ling Tam (Zhang Ziyi). The last of which is British communications officer Ava Hamilton who is grieving over the death of her children caused by a house fire. Almost two years have gone by and there was no success with accelerator known as the ‘Shephard’. However after another attempt, it appears to work but suffers from an overload and their station known as ‘Cloverfield’ has a power surge. When basic power is restored, Earth is missing in orbit and many things in station are out of place. A woman is found in the wires of one of the walls, leading to the crew rescuing her. Volkov loses his sanity as his eyes are moving to their own accord. He attempts to kill Schmidt with a 3D printed gun but he quickly dies after convulsion. His body than vomits the station’s worm colony that was also missing. The woman in the walls reveals her name to be Mina Jensen and claims to know Ava. She than reveals (Elizabeth Debicki) that Schmidt is a German spy and this claim is backed up when Kiel looks over his communication logs. When Mundy gets his arm severed from the walls, it gets a conscious and tells the crew to ‘Cut Volkov open’. With the requested autopsy, they find the gyroscope inside him. With it, they are able to find Earth. However, this is not their Earth as it appears to be on the opposite side of the sun. With everything they’ve discovered, Schmidt believes this is the result of the said theory that is the ‘Cloverfield Paradox’ where Shephard would open an inter dimensional gateway. This explains Jensen’s presence because in her dimension, she has Tam’s job and her Schmidt is a Germany spy. This also means that they could be in her earth. The plan is to use Shephard one more time, hoping that they’ll return to their dimension. In their dimension, Ava’s husband Michael (Roger Davies) wakes up to discover that something is attacking Earth. As he was heading to a hospital to help presumed victims, he finds a child named Molly and they both hide under an underground shelter. Michael contacts the space agency if they know the ship’s whereabouts, concerned of his wife, only to learn no other result than the station being missing. As the team repairs the ship, Tam gets trapped in a chamber that floods and quickly explodes, freezing her and the water in progress. Ava insists Jensen to take her place as she was trained for the Sam job. Mundy gets killed by a magnetic field in a storage room that explodes. Kiel, Monk and Ava go to jettison the damaged part of the station to save the rest but it’s Kiel who sacrificed himself in order to close the airlock behind. With Ava in now charge, she plans to go back home with Jensen, but it’s Jensen that goes rogue, knocking her unconscious. She shoots Mundy with Volkov’s gun and wounds Schmidt as well, with the intent of keeping the station in her dimension. When Ava takes the gun from her, she shoots at the window which sucks her into space. Due to originally wanting to go to Jensen’s dimension to see her children, she instead sends a recording to her counterpart, giving her plans of Shephard and remind her to love her children. After that, she and Schmidt are able to succeed with the return after using Shephard for the last time, following with them heading back to Earth in an evacuation capsule. Michael gets called back from the agency that the station and his wife is coming back. But he urges her to not come due to the chaos that has lccured. As the capsule enters the Earth’s atmosphere, the film ends with an adult Clover emerging and roaring over the clouds.
THOUGHTS
I really wanted to enjoy this film like everyone else at the time, but I was underwhelmed because this movie is very messy. There are some things that I like but there’s too many cons that end up outweighing the pros. The biggest problem with this movie is the attempt to tie in everything. Take your Slusho/Kelvin Easter eggs because that’s a given when JJ Abrams is involved. The bunker Michael hides in is a clever nod to 10 Cloverfield Lane, but you’re overdoing saying that John Goodman’s character Howard had a brother named Mark (Donal Logue) and saying he predicted the titular theory. I don’t even care that the reporter Suzanne Cryer plays here is the supposably the same woman from the better 2016 film. I want to be satisfied seeing the adult Clover because fans deserved to see that, but it belongs in a bigger movie. I’m even more pissed off that they’re implying what crashed in the ocean in the Cloverfield ending is not alien related but a goddamn satellite. The fact that they ruined that mystery is disappointing. I want to be invested with the multiverse due to its visual presentation but I’m lost by the time the characters have to discuss it. Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse was way less complicated compared to this movie, when it comes to multiverses. I want to like the cast for shooing in okay performances but I can’t connect with these characters at all. The only performance I liked the most was Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ava Hamilton. She is good at playing someone that is at the most conflicted part of her life. She is heavily grieving for the death of her children but still chooses to go to space because even though she’s part of a team trying to save the planet, she feels so broken that she feels like the children were her whole world that got taken. She still loves her husband but they are clearly separate in an emotional standpoint because they don’t know how to move on. The fact that she was temporarily willing to go to another universe to see her kids again, it just shows how broken she had been. You gain her respect when she chooses not to go through with it. Going back to the story, I find it weird how Monk is watching the news debating on their experiment when he should be focused on his job. I know you want to build up that shit’s gonna go down, but this is a lazy way to go. It is downright creepy that the worms and the gyro were inside Volkov and it took forever for him to die. I honestly think he should’ve died much quicker. It is cool that Mundy’s severed arm is somewhat sentient as it tells the crew to open up Volkov, which leads to the gyro. My problem is how the hell is that even possible? You spend so much time trying to explain the paradox yet you can’t explain how an arm is sentient after being cut off. He dies and it’s still its own thing and it’s weird. If the Ava in Jensen’s universe stayed behind to be with her kids, why the hell didn’t she get replaced the way Jensen replaces Tam? Did they really not need someone of her expertise? And lastly I know that you want a good dramatic reveal about the aliens invading Earth, but the agency should’ve told Ava and Schmidt something that shit has gone down since their absence before landing. In short, Julius Onah fails to have a positive interpretation on bringing things full circle. If you enjoyed the first two Cloverfield movies, good luck getting through this.
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