Cloverfield Paradox
On the weekend of 04/02 there was some rather large sporting event where two American football teams compete to wim a super bowl. Quite what makes this bowl “super” is anyone’s guess, but the event is just as famous for dropping major movie trailers during the half time show. One of the trailers dropped was for another Cloverfield movie which was released on Netflix that very night. Quite why Netflix suddenly dropped this bombshell on us was anyone’s guess, but we weren’t complaining because we had something to watch that weekend. It soon transpired that the reason why this was released with very little fanfare is that is really isn’t very good.
The film’s only saving grace, with exception of one or two good moments, was a superb, and emotionally raw performance from Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Mbatha-Raw, all on her own, makes the entire film worth watching because you do connect with her character (or what there is of her character) due to the her brilliant performance. The Interstellar like moment where she watches her family is a generally engaging moment in a film where these moments were few and far between. The performances of her fellow stars are fine but they may as well not even be there because their boring cardboard cut-out personalities ensure they don’t even make the slightest blip on the radar.
The Cloverfield aspects feel as though they were tacked on to a random movie (which probably wasn’t very good anyway) which is let down by clumsy exposition (we have these terrible scenes where the characters, via voiceover, debate what to do next) and poor dialogue. The film is also a horrible mismatch of deadpan humour (Chris O’Dowd’s character seems to have rather blasé attitude towards losing one of his limbs) and intense horror with neither really coming to the forefront. The film, all in all, is a bit of mess, and randomly adding aspect that would make it part of the Cloverfield franchise probably didn’t help.
