The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)
Directed by Julius Onah
Orbiting above a planet on the brink of war, scientists test a device to solve an energy crisis and end up face-to-face with a dark alternate reality.
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35 films that influenced The Cloverfield Paradox
What critics say influenced The Cloverfield Paradox
A hodgepodge of everything from Alien to Event Horizon to an episode of “Fringe” to Back to the Future to an H.P. Lovecraft story to the classic 1983 television movie The Day After, to call this effort a mess would be massively understating things.
After the accident, we suddenly shift into a sci-fi horror vibe, as if the ship has crossed over into the hellish dimension from Event Horizon.
Essentially: Blame science, and take a page or three from the scripts for Alien, Event Horizon and Pacific Rim.
This entry lacks the freshness of both, though, and instead regurgitates a sloppy stew inspired by the likes of Event Horizon , Life , and Interstellar .
Manically riffing on “Sunshine,” “Interstellar,” “Alien,” and then “Event Horizon” in a mad dash to obscure the fact that the film looks like a basic cable episode of “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Cloverfield Paradox” illustrates the dangerous cognitive dissonance that can result from a painfully derivative movie about a situation where anything is possible.
There is one brief section of the movie that doesn’t go along these lines and elects to go crazy instead—it starts off with O’Dowd’s character inexplicably losing his arm while trying to repair a wall and grows progressively battier—and it is the best portion of the movie because it is the one part where it seems to be doing its own thing instead of simply cribbing from films ranging from “Supernova” and “Event Horizon” to practically the entire “Alien” saga.
Wearing its influences far too readily on its sleeve – virtually every spaceship movie made in the last fifty years, from Alien to last year’s far superior but criminally-underrated Life – The Cloverfield Paradox, despite a strong opening and a satisfactorily-downbeat ending, has little of real interest going on for the bulk of its running time.
It’s not a monster movie, it’s not a character study of a diverse group working together to accomplish a scientific goal that could potentially bring about world peace, it’s not straight-up horror (the terrifying bits do seem inspired by Alien which is pleasant to report), and it’s not a time paradox mind-bender; it’s all of the above and fails at them all.
A hodgepodge of everything from Alien to Event Horizon to an episode of “Fringe” to Back to the Future to an H.P. Lovecraft story to the classic 1983 television movie The Day After , to call this effort a mess would be massively understating things.
To name only a handful: Poltergeist, Evil Dead 2, Moon, Another Earth, Alien, Event Horizon and even Alien Resurrection seem to receive clear callbacks.
Essentially: Blame science, and take a page or three from the scripts for Alien, Event Horizon and Pacific Rim.
Manically riffing on “Sunshine,” “Interstellar,” “Alien,” and then “Event Horizon” in a mad dash to obscure the fact that the film looks like a basic cable episode of “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Cloverfield Paradox” illustrates the dangerous cognitive dissonance that can result from a painfully derivative movie about a situation where anything is possible.
This entry lacks the freshness of both, though, and instead regurgitates a sloppy stew inspired by the likes of Event Horizon , Life , and Interstellar .
There’s so little investment in her narrative that Ava’s big emotional moment plays like a rip-off of Matthew McConaughey’s iconic Interstellar breakdown.
But with its haphazard plot twists and muddy motivations, Paradox mostly takes the boring parts from Life , Alien: Covenant , Event Horizon , and Interstellar (yes, people cry looking at screens), with a hint of one of the lesser Black Mirror episodes, and adds the word “Cloverfield.”
Story creators Oren Uziel and Doug Jung borrow heavily from films like “Interstellar,” ″Alien,” ″Event Horizon” and even “Evil Dead II” to create their thriller, but fall victim to strange detours, including a woefully flimsy Earth-bound story-line that pointlessly follows one of the astronaut’s husbands.
There are humanist bits and chunks of “Interstellar” and “Arrival,” though in order to set up another chapter of this loosely assembled saga of woe, “The Cloverfield Paradox” eventually, dutifully gets around to a nonhuman adversary in close-up.
Manically riffing on “Sunshine,” “Interstellar,” “Alien,” and then “Event Horizon” in a mad dash to obscure the fact that the film looks like a basic cable episode of “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Cloverfield Paradox” illustrates the dangerous cognitive dissonance that can result from a painfully derivative movie about a situation where anything is possible.
In 2016, a film initially titled The Cellar got branded 10 Cloverfield Lane and was released to critical plaudits and financial success; the movie had little to do with the original Cloverfield but had the same winking, self-aware approach to sci-fi horror (and the same production team).
A trainwreck of a sci-fi flick bent on extending a franchise that should have died a peaceful death almost exactly one decade ago, Julius Onah's The Cloverfield Paradox follows the lead of the far-superior 10 Cloverfield Lane in imagining a Cloverfield spinoff whose genre ingredients have little to do with the original found-footage, giant-monster flick.
It's a far cry from 2008's fun, inventive Cloverfield and 2016's smart, intense 10 Cloverfield Lane.
But like 10 Cloverfield Lane, the monsters are kind of an afterthought with the meat of the story and conflicts focused elsewhere.
While its predecessors, 2008’s Cloverfield and 2016’s 10 Cloverfield Lane , thrived on pre-release mystery, this was starting to feel less like calculated secrecy and more like a panicked flight.
While 10 Cloverfield Lane left us in the dark throughout the movie, The Cloverfield Paradox continually cuts back to Earth to show us that the monster is there, somewhere, doing something.
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Manically riffing on “Sunshine,” “Interstellar,” “Alien,” and then “Event Horizon” in a mad dash to obscure the fact that the film looks like a basic cable episode of “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Cloverfield Paradox” illustrates the dangerous cognitive dissonance that can result from a painfully derivative movie about a situation where anything is possible.
1979's "Alien," 1997's "Event Horizon," 2002's " Solaris ," 2007's " Sunshine ," and 2017's " Life ," to name a fewall are far superior space-set variations on similar themes and concepts involving alternate realities, deadly creatures, and a valiant attempt to save the world as the body count rises.
The film is that particular sort of sci-fi picture that most naturally asks to be described largely in terms of the other sci-fi pictures it resembles: in this case, the (wonderful, ever-underrated) 2007 Sunshine passes through 1997's Event Horizon on the way to becoming Alien , because of that universal law which decrees that all sci-fi/horror films eventually become Alien .
As you watch, you’ll think of movies like Event Horizon and Sunshine—and then you’ll immediately feel a need to apologize to those movies.
There’s no antagonist whatsoever in Cloverfield Paradox , not even an abstract one, like the sun in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine , or the merciless void of space in Gravity .
1979's "Alien," 1997's "Event Horizon," 2002's " Solaris ," 2007's " Sunshine ," and 2017's " Life ," to name a fewall are far superior space-set variations on similar themes and concepts involving alternate realities, deadly creatures, and a valiant attempt to save the world as the body count rises.
That is a promising concept, I suppose—something like a sci-fi take on the classic Daffy Duck cartoon “Duck Amuck,” in which Daffy was at the mercy of a mischievous animator (guess who?) who changed the circumstances of his existence in a flash with increasing surreal results—but screenwriter Oren Uziel has no clear idea of how to implement such an idea.
A trainwreck of a sci-fi flick bent on extending a franchise that should have died a peaceful death almost exactly one decade ago, Julius Onah's The Cloverfield Paradox follows the lead of the far-superior 10 Cloverfield Lane in imagining a Cloverfield spinoff whose genre ingredients have little to do with the original found-footage, giant-monster flick.
The Cloverfield movies are science fiction, but what Netflix pulled off with the surprise post–Super Bowl launch of The Cloverfield Paradox is more akin to alchemy.
All of that aside, the biggest crime the film commits is promising to fans that this is a Cloverfield sequel/prequel/whatever.
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Story creators Oren Uziel and Doug Jung borrow heavily from films like “Interstellar,” ″Alien,” ″Event Horizon” and even “Evil Dead II” to create their thriller, but fall victim to strange detours, including a woefully flimsy Earth-bound story-line that pointlessly follows one of the astronaut’s husbands.
A hodgepodge of everything from Alien to Event Horizon to an episode of “Fringe” to Back to the Future to an H.P. Lovecraft story to the classic 1983 television movie The Day After , to call this effort a mess would be massively understating things.