The Living Room Bijou: The Cloverfield Paradox

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) is the third entry for J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfieldfranchise (the first of which, out of the found-footage horror genre, I enjoyed; I missed the second). It’s an okay sci-fi/horror piece, that, while purporting to be based on real science, is too fanciful and goofy to take with anything more than a grain of meteor dust.

Once again, we’re in Earth’s dystopian future (now de regueur in the genre; Lord help us, if hope and optimism ever become fashionable again). Human civilization has maxxed out its energy supplies (somehow, even wind, solar and water are not workable either . . . okay, we’re still here). Doom’s a-knockin’ at our door.

Meanwhile, circling about the planet, is the good spaceship Cloverfield Station. Humanned by an international crew, it’s attempting to boot up the Shepherd particle accelerator to somehow provide Earth with an eternal supply of energy.

Of course, this is a fiction and that means this is not a good idea. (Otherwise, we’d more likely have a documentary, or an earlier episode of Star Trek). Once the plot engine launches into hyper-drive, the film is invaded by a typical cosmic motley of Alien,Space, and other, supposedly more science-based, movies. Ex Machina it is not.

Things go to hell in a hyper-space pod, as Things and Stuff from Another Universe crash and pop into this one, turning existence upside down, backward, and inside out, like a flashy but poorly knit sock, wooly with loose threads. Trapped in a mirror image Universe, the crew must find a way back to this one. There’s also the usual background character B.S. meant to encourage swelling hearts and damp hankies . . . .

While the rest of us shake our heads, we can enjoy the elaborate gleaming production and performances by an able cast, including Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Black Mirror), Daniel Brühl (The Alienist), David Oyelowo (Selma), John Ortiz (Luck), and, most entertainingly, Chris O’Dowd (Epix’s Get Shorty). O’Dowd gets most of the laughs as he gets separated from his arm, which later returns with its own agenda. Several cast members meet their ends in suitably grotesque fashion.

Not surprisingly, shit goes really helter-skelter at the end, as the movie undercuts its mediocre drama with a joke ending out of an old Robert Bloch/Twilight Zonestory. 

And, this being a Cloverfield movie, you’ll be waiting for it before the opening credits even role.

Thomas Burchfield’s Butchertown,a ripping, 1920s gangster shoot-‘em-up  novel is now available! His contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark won the IPPY, NIEA, and Halloween Book Festival awards for horror in 2012. He’s also author of the original screenplays Whackers, The Uglies, Now Speaks the Devil and Dracula: Endless Night (e-book editions only). Published by Ambler House Publishing, all are available at Amazon,Barnes and Noble, Powell's Books, and other retailers. His reviews have appeared in Bright Lights Film Journaland The Strand and he recently published a two-part look at the life and career of the great film villain (and spaghetti western star) Lee Van Cleef in Filmfax. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.