Remember "Life", the recent sci-fi horror "Alien" knockoff with a great cast that couldn't compete with its sterile script? "The Cloverfield Paradox" is this year's "Life", except worse.
I'm a sucker for sci-fi horror, so despite the bad reviews I went into this movie with an open mind. Truthfully, it's not terrible, mostly due to the cast. There isn't a weak link in the acting department. No matter how trite or cliché the dialogue is, they deliver it with the necessary gravitas. Sadly, this is a sci-fi horror film, so the bulk of the film's effectiveness lies with the scares. And that's where this movie fails. There was not a single decent scare or even an attempt at building suspense. There could have been tension had the location been bottled in the space station, but the movie cuts to and from an Earth storyline that has absolutely no bearing on the plot whatsoever.
The movie itself makes no sense. It takes a page out of the "Event Horizon" book with the alternate dimensions and whatnot, which is a cool premise. The problem is that as soon as things go awry, the rulebook goes out the window. Things just happen because why the hell not. Chris O'Dowd's arm gets cut off and begins to write a message on its own. Some guy starts convulsing and worms burst out of his face. A stranger suddenly materializes inside one of the space station's walls. "Why?" is a valid question to all of these statements, but the movie has no intention of explaining anything.
Then there's the Cloverfield aspect, which is clearly just tacked on at the end to capitalize on the name. Again, aside from the dedicated cast and some admittedly cool looking deaths, "The Cloverfield Paradox" brings nothing new or interesting to the genre. It's yet another "Alien" derivation with even less to say than the films that came before it.
I'm a sucker for sci-fi horror, so despite the bad reviews I went into this movie with an open mind. Truthfully, it's not terrible, mostly due to the cast. There isn't a weak link in the acting department. No matter how trite or cliché the dialogue is, they deliver it with the necessary gravitas. Sadly, this is a sci-fi horror film, so the bulk of the film's effectiveness lies with the scares. And that's where this movie fails. There was not a single decent scare or even an attempt at building suspense. There could have been tension had the location been bottled in the space station, but the movie cuts to and from an Earth storyline that has absolutely no bearing on the plot whatsoever.
The movie itself makes no sense. It takes a page out of the "Event Horizon" book with the alternate dimensions and whatnot, which is a cool premise. The problem is that as soon as things go awry, the rulebook goes out the window. Things just happen because why the hell not. Chris O'Dowd's arm gets cut off and begins to write a message on its own. Some guy starts convulsing and worms burst out of his face. A stranger suddenly materializes inside one of the space station's walls. "Why?" is a valid question to all of these statements, but the movie has no intention of explaining anything.
Then there's the Cloverfield aspect, which is clearly just tacked on at the end to capitalize on the name. Again, aside from the dedicated cast and some admittedly cool looking deaths, "The Cloverfield Paradox" brings nothing new or interesting to the genre. It's yet another "Alien" derivation with even less to say than the films that came before it.