(Spoilers for The Cloverfield Paradox and Eden Lake)
I have no idea where to start with this movie.
I really don’t.
I’ll just start with the Cloverfield franchise resurrection.
10 Cloverfield Lane wasn’t without its problems. Anyone that knew about its production history could easily tell that the third act was the result of rewrites that were brought on when the film was changed to Cloverfield’s “blood relative”, as J.J. Abrams put it. But the meat of the film was so strong that a tacked on generic third act didn’t hurt it too much. Plus the very ending is excellent. And while I was certainly hoping to see Clover, the monster whose design I so intently anticipated 8 years prior, the idea of a Twilight Zone style film series was interesting enough for me that I awaited whatever would come next.
But more than this, I liked the idea of the producers giving filmmakers chances on exciting original material, even if that material had a brand.
Which brings us to The Cloverfield Paradox.
Oh boy.
To the credit of him and the producers, this might be Abrams’ best and most controversial marketing move yet. A friend of mine (who was fond of the movie) wrote;
“Netflix and JJ Abrams just announced to the world at large with a teaser trailer that they will be releasing a new movie in the “Cloverfield” series. We haven’t seen anything of it, didn’t even know what it was called or what it was about really (still don’t, actually). Tonight was the first thing anyone had seen anything of it.
And it will be available to watch on Netflix tonight.
Low key, this could have some very serious and significant ramifications for movies, marketing, and the theater going experience. It’s both exciting and kind of intimidating.”
This is, in some ways, a simple risk, and given the reception the film is getting it’s being (rightfully) associated with Paramount trying to dump the movie as soon as possible, but what an exciting risk, particularly given how reflective it is of modern cinema distribution. This is something that theoretically could have happened 5 years ago but it certainly wouldn’t have. In addition, I and many others essentially felt all the anticipation we had with Cloverfield and Lane brilliantly condensed into a few hours. The idea of a genuine Cloverfield follow up, something that was hinted at for years and briefly dreamed about upon the announcement of Lane, wasn’t just confirmed, it was going to be on our TV sets within a few hours.
I just wish the movie lived up to it.
Before I get into everything, I’d like to point out that I have many friends (one of whom was the source of the prior quote, something he wrote before he saw the movie) who really dug this movie, and I’m glad they did. I look forward to discussing it with them more to hear further insights. There’s also a few things and issues I’m going to get out of the way in order to show what I’m going to emphasize on.
Firstly, just as with 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Cloverfield Paradox started out as another project entirely, a space station thriller (comparisons to Alien, Life, or Event Horizon have been made) titled God Particle, and after some rewrites it was turned into an entry in the Cloverfield franchise. I don’t want to assume that the rewrites simply added a subplot to tie this into the Cloverfield universe, but it’s safe to say there is a core space station horror movie here that, in some sense, is reflective of what God Particle was originally supposed to be. I’ll say that the core movie we have is a mixed bag, with some great horror elements and ideas but a script that even a terrific ensemble like this one couldn’t save.
That said, though my focus will certainly involve acknowledging the core film and its aspirations, this is not going to be a review of that core film. The criticisms I will focus on remain constant whether or not the core film is good or bad.
Secondly, when I saw the Super Bowl spot for Paradox, knowing the original concept before it was Cloverfield-ized, I thought they would have changed it so it became a thriller about people on a space station knowing full well about the original Cloverfield monster and their involvement with it and trying to stop it. This turned out to not be the case, and I think that could have been a more satisfying Cloverfield follow-up, but I won’t get into that either. That would be more fan fiction than it would be film criticism, and while I will get into some “what ifs” with my criticisms, I feel my criticisms stay true to the core aspirations of the film instead of suggesting the film should be about something else entirely.
Thirdly, there were things discussed via viral marketing for the first Cloverfield regarding the origins of the monster. These origins are, beyond a single solitary doubt, ignored/retconned in this film. I rather liked those origins, but they were “blink and you miss it also you have to look into the viral marketing to find out their significance” so it’s not like everyone who saw Cloverfield knew about them. We’re not talking about the X-Men cinematic universe’s plot holes here, so I won’t be criticizing these either.
Instead, my focus here will be on the Cloverfield elements, and how integrating them not more, but less into the film while maintaining these connections (such as, most importantly, the final shot) would have benefited the film substantially.
So, let’s begin by getting the general plot of the movie and its connections to the first out of the way.
The world has an energy crisis, and because of this, the nations of the world have created the Shephard Particle Accelerator aboard the Cloverfield Station. If it works, we’ll have renewable energy forever and ever.
This brings us to the Hamilton’s, a wife and husband who lost their children to a fire. They are the bridge between the original God Particle story and the new Cloverfield elements. At the encouragement of Mr. Hamilton, Mrs. Hamilton joins the crew of the Cloverfield Station.
However, there’s controversy regarding the Cloverfield Station. These concerns are explained to us by a Professor who had criticized the project, bringing his criticisms under an umbrella term called The Cloverfield Paradox. According to the Professor, the Paradox means that…like….all the particles smashing will mess up…space time, or something, and this won’t just interfere with our dimension at the present time, but could alter our past and future and interfere with countless dimensions.
(Hello, world-building and future Cloverfield movies)
After two years of failed tries, one attempt actually works….but after it works, the Earth has disappeared.
So, Professor Plot Device was right. The Earth is gone and the crew may very well have ended the lives of eight billion people.
Except we find out fairly early on (before the crew!) that this isn’t true. Some time after all this is established and the crew still doesn’t know what happened, we cut back to Mr. Hamilton back on Earth, where some ‘splosions start occurring and it turns out there’s an unseen monster attacking. And so begins a subplot the film continuously cuts back to. This subplot involves Mr. Hamilton driving around, finding a little girl amongst some wreckage, driving around with that little girl, going to a bunker, informing her parents she’s okay, all the while texting fellow people about all this crazy monster stuff and waiting for updates on the missing Cloverfield Station from some Government Guy.
Meanwhile on Cloverfield Station, we learn they’re in another dimension, and they’re trying to get back to our Earth so they can utilize the energy they’ve finally maintained. And when they do (there’s a lot more that happens, I’m just keeping it as simple as possible), Mr. Hamilton is alerted by Government Guy that the station has returned and that the damages to the station have forced the surviving crew to come back to Earth. He starts screaming at Government Guy to tell Mrs. and the other survivor not to come back to Earth.
We then have a shot of the station’s escape pod returning to Earth. It’s miniscule, but visible, and it then disappears beneath the clouds.
Immediately following this in the same shot, an enormous monster appears above the clouds, clearly being of the same species, as well as clearly dwarfing, the creature we saw in the first Cloverfield (it was a baby, after all). The monster is roaring, and the film ends on this dour note. (we don’t see this, but given where the escape pod fell into the clouds and the size of the monster, the surviving crew’s ship presumably either fell into the mouth of the beast or crashed into the body).
It’s worth noting that these connections and their implications are fairly clever. For example, J.J. Abrams established from the time that the first Cloverfield came out that the monster in the film is a baby. I’m of the opinion that Mama and Papa Clover were put in one dimension and Baby Clover was sent to the dimension we see in the first film. Meaning the closing shot is that of a parent who is screaming in agony after losing their child.
But as cool as all of this is, and as excited as I am about the world building of this franchise in the future, we have to look at the core film of The Cloverfield Paradox and how the handling of these world building elements ultimately don’t compliment the core film at hand. This is, in my opinion, the fundamental flaw of the film.
When I learned about the general concept of God Particle, a big portion of the tension came from the idea that, as the Christian doctor on the Cloverfield Station Monk (John Ortiz) points out, they could have ended the lives of 8 billion people.
I mean, the Earth could be gone.
As someone that was haunted as a child by that one-shot episode of Dexter’s Laboratory that ended with Dexter and Mandark destroying planet Earth, I have to say, what a terrifying concept.
And the film completely obliterates this tension for no other reason than to tie it into the other Cloverfield films (and as I’ll point out, they could still have maintained a connection without obliterating that tension!) Going further, there is an isolation based tension the film strives for with the core God Particle story, which focuses on a crew who has no idea what is going on back on Earth. Cutting back to Earth as the film does is just completely, unequivocally contrary to that tension.
I mean, these tensions are based in being in one location and not knowing certain information. The scenes that cut back to Earth MAKE FOR TWO LOCATIONS AND PROVIDES INFORMATION!
It leads to the film not having a focus and wondering what this is all leading to. As the plot continues forward on the station, I found myself wondering “what’s the point of them going back?” as I was watching the movie.
To make matters worse, the Earth scenes once the interdimensional conflict happen are terrible. Firstly, they don’t effectively establish the state the Earth is in. Mr. Hamilton comes across one destroyed building and spends a scene of the movie safely driving on a highway, which seems to imply we’re just dealing with the single infant monster in a single city and not multiple monsters 10 times its size occupying the planet.
Secondly, they don’t even have the decency of being well written. We’re introduced to the girl he has to save in a deeply bizarre moment in which she’s standing frozen in the middle of rubble and screaming “HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP” with a dead expression in her eyes.
(I sincerely hope this girl’s career as an actress is not at all hindered by these scenes that consisted of last minute direction in poorly handled reshoots.)
So when the film reaches its conclusion and the what would have been a brilliant closing shot occurs, I found myself in a state of confusion. On one end of the spectrum was “well, no shit, of course they were going back to an Earth with a monster, you kept cutting back to that very situation for no reason other than to remind us it was happening”, and on the other end was “wait, it was that bad? The monsters were that big? The planet is supposedly overwhelmed with monsters and that’s how Mr. Hamilton was responding to the whole thing?”
It’s stupid, empty storytelling. It’s nothingness that ends in nothingness.
……HOWEVER.
All this being said, I am not, in any capacity, against the prospect of an ending that makes the conflicts of the film in retrospect irrelevant.
What I’m asking for is storytelling potency, which in this case would have been accomplished in utilizing a plot twist.
Take Eden Lake. The meat of the film is centered around a couple (Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender) being terrorized and tortured by evil teenagers. At the end of the film and after killing some of them, the surviving Reilly escapes, only to search for solace in the wrong house; it’s the house of the ring leader, and we learn that his behavior was encouraged in him by his abusive father. When the father learns that Reilly killed some of the other teenagers, he both denies any wrongdoing his son may have done and takes revenge for the dead teenagers by torturing her to death.
(Quick aside; Eden Lake’s ending is an ending that is heartbreaking and devastating in a way that I’m not used to with horror. It’s vicious and sad. It explores the familiar idea of “violence begets violence”, but strengthens it by exploring the concept of blood lust being satisfied by monsters because the monsters use “justice” as an excuse. It’s also strengthened by a terrific cast, particularly Reilly. It’s an excellent film that I will never see again and I highly recommend it.)
There’s a brilliant manner in which Eden Lake establishes its twist, and it’s something The Cloverfield Paradox could have learned from. There’s a scene early on in Lake where Fassbedner attempts to confront the father of the ring leader (this is when they were just being harassed; the brutality hadn’t started yet), leading to a tense set piece in which Fassbender mistakenly trespasses and has to escape the house. It is in this scene that the father’s abusive and violent tendencies aren’t outright shown but are certainly indicated at.
By planting this seed, we aren’t completely taken by surprise when the ending comes, and by focusing on Fassbender and Reilly trying to survive without any cutbacks to the ring leader getting the shit beaten out of him by Daddy, the ending’s retroactive impact on the rest of the film hits us all the harder.
Now to utilize these lessons from Eden Lake and get into what I think The Cloverfield Paradox should have done.
When I finished Paradox, I initially thought more impactful images of a monster overrun Earth during these cutbacks would have made for a stronger film.
In one way, I was right, and in another way I wasn’t. As I feel I’ve made a valid case for, the constant cutbacks, no matter what they consisted of, have diluted the story and made a messy, unfocused film.
That being said, the film is still in desperate need of effective imagery to sell the concept of an Earth overrun by monsters to make the ending work.
So, here’s what I propose should have happened. Again, I don’t think this is fan fiction so much as it is looking at the film as how it is and how the material could have better served itself.
Keep Mr. Hamilton as a character to ground the story, and especially keep his first scenes with Mrs. Hamilton prior to the interdimensional stuff, but instead of cutting back to a useless subplot, add something to the sequence when the Cloverfield Station works but is sent to another dimension. We instead cross cut that sequence with a scene of Mr. Hamilton going outside to look at some portal, maybe some freak electric storm….honestly, anything, just something visual. This would be the last shot on Earth before the end of the movie.
That visual signifier, the portal, electric storm, whatever it need be, would truthfully be related to the coming of the monsters. But as we wouldn’t cut back to Earth until the end of the movie, this visual signifier would compliment the tension of the crew wondering if they had destroyed Earth; it would lead us to think it was related to Earth being destroyed.
When we learn it hasn’t been destroyed, we presume the visual signifier was just part of the station disappearing and pay it no mind, as we have to focus on the rest of the conflicts at hand.
Now, when we cut back to Earth at the end of the film, our attention would have been entirely focused on the main plot; getting the Cloverfield Station back to Earth. Now not only has that happened, but the Earth will have limitless energy. So we think we’re heading back to a happy ending! Hurrah!
This is when the film would cut to a similar scene to the one we saw in the final film, but instead of Mr. Hamilton being in a single bunker with one child that he’s protected, cut to him in a larger bunker overrun with injured people trying to survive after the chaos of the monsters has occurred. He’s informed of the return of his wife and the other survivor to Earth and responds with his “tell them not to come back” moment.
This leads to us being confused and scared as to what exactly has happened on Earth, and when we continue to the final shot, we don’t know what Earth they’re landing on…with the final shot of the larger monster properly changing the tone of the ending.
This would give a potency to the ending of the film retroactively making the rest of it irrelevant. It wouldn’t be something we were waiting for, it would be something that had a seed planted that we would ignore, only for it to come back and bite us in the ass.
Some might argue that this wouldn’t negate the issue of the Cloverfield elements being tacked on.
I disagree. I think in focusing on the story the way it does that this could have been some minimal but outstanding world building being perfectly combined with the core storytelling of the film.
Of course, none of this would solve the issues of the meat of the script being pretty bad, with actors desperately trying their best to elevate it (aside from Chris O’Dowd, someone I normally like who seems to have resigned to the fact that his character is comic relief.)
But would I take an okay space station thriller with a bad script and excellent world building over an unfocused disaster that does few favors to the world building and no favors to the film itself?
Any day.
devilsadvocritic 