Julius Onah’s “The Cloverfield Paradox” has been in development since 2012 as “The God Particle”, doing their best
to disguise it of being completely connected to the “Cloverfield” franchise (much like “10 Cloverfield Lane” before it). This one takes a much different approach, shying away from the found footage take of the original as well as focusing on a microscopic look at a tight set of characters from its sequel, ‘The Cloverfield Paradox” encompasses a whole earth on the brink of panic due to an energy crisis.
Hamilton (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) the civilian corniator is front and center here as she is 1 of 7 crew mates aboard the space station Sheppard. While none of them have a title they do wear name tags and badges from their respected backgrounds, she seems to be right along side the later mentioned Commander (David Oyelowo) Kiel. She is also the only one who gets any sort of tie to home with video calls and any sort of family interaction outside the mission.
As for the rest of the crew (Daniel Brühl) is Schmidt the physicist, (Cris O’Dowd) Mundy appears to be the maintenance guy provides the comedic relief, (John Oritz) is Monk the Doctor, (Aksel Hennie) the angry Russian maintenance guy Volkov and last but not least (Ziyi Zhang)Tan and (Elizabeth Debicki) Jensen are both engineers.
The film works as a singular entity that hints at a larger world while managing to tell a classic story that harkens back at movies like “Alien”, “Event Horizon” and “Gravity” without ever truly committing to the horror aspects of either. It’s a very polished space thriller that builds on the lore of the “Cloverfield” universe. That said it could also serve as its own vibrant story outside of this particular canon.
While the trailer was release during the Super Bowl and the movie went straight to Netflix following that would likely make it the shortest gap for trailer to movie premier release ever. Unfortunately nearly all the critics are bashing this one but I really enjoyed it
Streaming on Netflix
Rated TV-MA Violence, gore and brief strong language
IMDB 6.0/10
Tomatometer 17/59
I give it B+
