The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

I barely remember the first Cloverfield movie and didn't watch the second one. I tend to find that J.J. Abrams has many great ideas but never really fulfills the promise of those ideas. I hope that isn't the case here but halfway through the film I am having doubts.

The film takes place in a world where power is a luxury and dwindling reserves are leaving the world in chaos. In space a team of scientists are trying to solve this power problem with an experimental particle accelerator that they have spent two years trying to get to work. On the day they finally do get the machine to work, everything falls apart and suddenly the Earth they were orbiting no longer seems to exist. Many other strange things begin to happen on space and back on Earth.

 

I so want this all of this to make sense by the end. I am deliberately avoiding watching the trailer at this moment in case it reveals something I don't need to know just yet.

As it turned out the trailer does nothing to make anything clearer and while they do solves some mysteries, some things that happen in this film are passed over like they never occurred which is very annoying. Why is the dead guy filled with worms? JJ doesn't care. Why is the arm still moving while detached from another guys body? Aside from giving the crew a vital plot point, I mean. See, JJ doesn't care about that either.

More questions are raised when a woman who claims to be a member of the crew arrives on the station. No one, however, knows her or has met her before. As the crew searches for answers they begin to turn on one another. Few of those scenes make any sense without some kind of context.

And that is what is wrong with the Cloverfield Paradox. It makes sense and doesn't make sense all at the same time. You kinda like it while you are watching it but afterwards you start to think about it and dislike it more and more for how it can never decide the kind of movie that it wants to be - or at least leave us with SOME interest in the future of the 'Cloverfield' franchise. This movie does none of that.

I am at that stage with this whole Cloverfield 'experience'. I could have been thoughtful but it just turns out to be a big fat nothing burger like more things that JJ Abrams puts his name to.

"A kluge of bad science and worse science fiction clichés, it tries to be atmospheric and scary but succeeds only at being frustrating and tedious."