Maybe it’s only fitting, for these strange times, that The Cloverfield Paradox itself sees reality thrown into chaos, like Futurama’s What If machine on jukebox mode. Directed by Julius Onah, this is the second spin-off from 2008’s Cloverfield, which was joined by Dan Trachtenberg’s unexpectedly taut 10 Cloverfield Lane. But where the latter movie, released in 2016, found plenty of mileage in a single, basement location – aided by great performances from Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman – The Cloverfield Paradox shoots for something rather more wide-ranging and grandiose, and doesn’t quite hit its mark. Written by Oren Uziel (22 Jump Street, Shimmer Lake), The Cloverfield Paradox heaps all kinds of ideas into its story, from Gravity-style survival to Cronenbergian body horror to Solaris-esque moments of paranoia and regret. Holding everything together is a rock-solid cast, which includes Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ava, the British member of the international crew aboard the Cloverfield space station – she’s joined by Daniel Bruhl, David Oyelowo, Chris O’Dowd and Zhang Ziyi, who play a few of the other experts who’ve spent about two years living cheek-by-jowl in Earth’s orbit. Predictably, turning on the particle accelerator doesn’t go well for the crew, but the filmmakers don’t follow the typical monster-on-a-space-station route audiences might expect. Instead, the horrors that await the Cloverfield are surreal and often difficult to predict, ranging from vanishing limbs, unexpected showers of worms and a worrying deployment of 3D printers. For the first 45 minutes or so, Onah keeps the pot simmering as Ava and her crew lurch from crisis to crisis; Chris O’Dowd, and some distinct moments of black comedy in the script, also help to keep the plot from falling into a predictable rhythm. There are also plenty of signs that the movie went through some heavy re-edits before its Netflix debut. The characters are barely sketched in, and the opening credits show brief cuts of scenes that look like the last remaining traces of missing some missing characterisation. The quality of the production design and special effects varies wildly, too, from some great-looking sets to effects shots that, by big-screen standards at least, look somewhat rushed. In this regard, it’s not hard to see why the powers that be opted to place The Cloverfield Paradox on Netflix rather than in cinemas. It certainly looks rather pale next to Daniel Espinosa’s hugely effective Life – a sci-fi horror that got far more mileage out of its space station setting, yet still didn’t make a huge impression at the box-office. The Cloverfield Paradox is available to stream on Netflix now.
