Review:
Netflix surprised everyone at the 2018 Super Bowl, not only did they release a trailer for the untitled Cloverfield film (Now titled 'The Cloverfield Paradox'), but they also made the shocking announcement that the film was released and ready to watch that same day. It's a ballsy move that certainly raises questions and sets an interesting precedent on how films are released, but after watching it, it's easy to see why this was released on Netflix rather than theaters.
The Cloverfield franchise itself has been a very interesting one. First we had a found-footage monster film that sparked a new age of mystery (I was only 11, but I remember all the hype and excitement of the viral marketing. People guessing what the monster would look like etc), it was the golden age of internet film fandom, back when IMDB had message boards, remember those? That came and went, with rumblings about a sequel which never surfaced until 2016, when a trailer was dropped for 10 Cloverfield Lane, which was releasing only a couple of months after the trailer was shown.
I was hugely excited for this. I liked the idea of these little anthology horror/thrillers taking place in the same world. Now it's a shame that the series may have just faded into nothingness with this extremely disappointing dud of a sci-fi thriller. Once you look a little closer into the troubled production of Cloverfield Paradox, you start to see why this was released the way it was. It went over budget and Paramount were sure it would flop, so they sold it to Netflix for a small profit and cut their losses there.
On a space station titled 'Cloverfield' a group of bland scientists discover that the Earth has disappeared after an experiment goes wrong, weird shit goes on and things go pretty much how you'd expect. This isn't a problem, I'm fine with formulaic films as long they at least have some character or something to grab you. It's just there's nothing here.
Despite it's $50 million budget, it looks like garbage. This doesn't look like a film, aside from a few visual flourishes, this looks like an expensive TV pilot, and I'm not sure how this happened. I watched the first episode of Netflix's Altered Carbon recently and despite being a TV show, it actually looks more like a film than this does. It feels like some Asylum knock-off of Life (Which was a fairly generic sci-fi horror in itself, but it at least had fun with it).
The cast are nothing, vastly underwritten objects that spout poorly written exposition in ways that get more and more laughable. Chris O'Dowd does bring some fun to proceedings, but his character gets more irritating once you realise he is nothing more than comic relief and absolutely nothing beneath the surface. I'm a week removed from this film and I'm failing to recall anyone's name.
Things happen in this film without any real explanation. We're told "Parallel Universes are colliding", but this doesn't explain why so much happens, including some outrageous coincidences. Some cool stuff does happen though, the stuff with the hand was morbidly funny in an odd way and last shot of the film is pretty easy to figure out early on, but it still brings back a familiar face and gets me a bit excited for the future of the series, despite the problems this film has caused.
While most of the events take place on the space station, a side-plot (That goes absolutely nowhere) takes place on Earth during what we assume is the first Cloverfield. I was all for this, but the story line is aimless, pointless and leads to nothing. Making me wonder why an extra 20 minutes was added to this mess in the first place. I know this had reshoots to tie it in to the Cloverfield brand, so I assume this was shoehorned in to pay some fan service. It doesn't work.
One of the biggest problems here is the attempts to over explain things for the franchise. They couldn't just let them happen with no explanation, they had to come up with some lame reasons why the events of the first and second films happened, who cares? A giant monster attacks a city, we don't need a franchise to explain why.
I saw it the day it was announced, which is the most interesting thing about this mess. We're only in the third Cloverfield film and it seems like they've already ruined it in this bland, poorly written mess. Here's hoping 'Overlord' is better than this.
4/10 Dans
The Cloverfield Project is streaming now on Netflix UK
Watch the trailer below:
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