‘The Cloverfield Paradox’ – Less Of A Bang Than a Wimper From New Netflix Film

The release of the trailer for the brand new ‘Cloverfield’ film, teased lovers of the franchise everywhere. J.J. Abrams had the mammoth task of bringing to life one of best loved Sci-Fi flicks, and this trailer promises it will be done with a “bang”. In reality however, it didn’t so much ‘bang’ as it did wheeze slowly like a deflating balloon.

When you hear the word ‘Cloverfield’ your head is filled with the images of aliens invading earth and causing mayhem for us humans. In the ‘Cloverfield Paradox’ however, there is an unusual lack of aliens.

The film plot starts with earth running out of energy. As a result, a group of astronauts are sent to a space station, in an attempt to extract energy to give to planet earth. Instead however, they are propelled into the paradox. It has been speculated that the opening of the paradox is a bid to introduce variations of the ‘Cloverfield’ invasion, spread out across multiple dimensions in time and space. Although the film intended to confuse and blur the concepts of reality, the only scene which sticks in my mind, and that is the tastelessly comic loss of Chris O’Dowd’s character’s arm.

The characters have little substance to them with next to no impact on the storyline itself. The main character (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) has a back story, a family and a life we can relate to. This gives her character meaning and a purpose. The others – she lives with them for years in a space station and we know nothing about them. Oh, and then we have that whole “will they, won’t they” thing between Tam and Schmidt. The whole film would have made more of an impact if I actually cared when characters were killed off, but without any substance, I just didn’t.

This however isn’t the last we have seen of the franchise. ‘The Cloverfield Paradox’ concluded with the main character travelling back to earth to our first glimpse of an alien invasion. Hopefully the next film will, if possible, show more of what is so fundamental to the ‘Cloverfield’ storylines, and that is, aliens.