THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX REVIEW

The Cloverfield Paradozzzzz

Orbiting a planet on the brink of war, scientists test a device to solve an energy crisis, and end up face-to-face with a dark alternate reality.

Slow, disjointed and disappointing on all fronts.

The agonizing slow opening didn’t build high hopes despite Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s (Belle) best efforts. Drudging through some guff about blackouts and finding a new source of energy.

The visuals effects were impressive enough BUT it took a good 20 minutes before anything interesting actually happened. We watched as the team of cliched characters argued and scrapped after two years of failing to deliver results.

Bear McCreary’s score was wasted on this film BUT it lifted a seemingly bland and hum drum first act.

However, one final test on the accelerator changed everything as the team were inadvertently teleported to another reality (One of vast nothingness apparently).

Five minutes later, one ear piercing Godzilla like shriek and I was intrigued.

BUT instead of getting some gargantuan alien super being, we had an amnesia-ridden Elizabeth Debicki (The Man From U.N.C.L.E) trapped in a wall.

Okay, the mangled time lines and molecular restructuring had its moments as crew members fused into walls and rooms and parts of the ship moved around BUT it wasn’t enough.

I was disappointed at how such a talented cast were given such unmemorable characters.

I mean, come on! You had David Oyelowo (Selma) playing a tortured space captain that spent the majority of the film sobbing in his quarters and Ziyi Zhang (House of Flying Daggers) in one of the most unmemorable supporting roles I’ve seen. What a waste of an actress.

Even when the inevitable body count rose, I felt nothing for them.

It had so much promise BUT just didn’t amount to anything. It could have gone down the Event Horizon route, it didn’t. We could have had a demented take on 2001: A Space Odyssey, we didn’t.

Daniel Bruhl (Good Bye Lenin!) and Aksel Hennie (Headhunters) were the only memorable characters.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Only Chris O’Dowd (The IT Crowd) could get away with making one scene so ridiculous actually work.

The arm! My God. Seriously? If someone’s (perfectly clean) severed arm crawled across the floor like Thing out of The Addams Family; I wouldn’t be standing there pointing.

The best scene BUT also the worst as it established Paradox’s underlying problem. A lack of direction and tone. A chaotic mess. That laughable moment livened up an incredibly dull affair.

Debicki was left to wallow on a bed and reminisce about memories of Hamilton (Mbatha-Raw) from another reality. Yawnnn . . .

I was more interested in what Hamilton’s husband (Roger Davies) was doing back on Earth in the disjointed side story. It beat watching the crew go stir crazy and inevitably betray each other.

Some things are better left unanswered. I think the Paradox team should have learned from the Alien franchise.

I can respect that it tried to be something different BUT apart from that final shot, I couldn’t even call this a Cloverfield film.

It was tough NOT to make comparisons. At least 10 Cloverfield Lane gave some sort of indication that it fit in the same universe. And at least that was an absorbing thriller that made full use of its THREE protagonists.

Where did Paradox even fit in the timeline? Before or after? Was their experiment the reason that giant creature hit the city in the first place?

By the end, I didn’t care. Maybe I expected too much BUT it failed to deliver in tension, suspense and the tone was completely all over the place. It felt like the production company just nicked the Cloverfield title for click bait.

Or maybe this film was teleported from another reality where the Cloverfield movies were dire efforts that went straight to Netflix? Maybe .  . .

2/5

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE REVIEW

Cloverfield Lame? Or Cloverfield Insane?

Not my best effort BUT click bait is click bait.

After getting in a car accident, a woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is held in a shelter with two men (John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr), who claim the outside world is affected by a widespread chemical attack.

A fantastic Hitchcockian opening sequence delivered high hopes as Mary Elizabeth Winstead attempted her Janet Leigh-esque escape from a bad break up. Bear McCreary’s sinister score. The window shots. It felt like an homage to Psycho from director Dan Trachtenberg.

Small trivia fact: I didn’t realise the voice of Michelle’s (Winstead) ex Ben was none other than Bradley Cooper’s.

The story didn’t mess about. It set everything up and let it all come tumbling down within 10 minutes. Hooked, line and sinker. One car collision later and Michelle awakens trapped in a bunker with her leg in a brace and handcuffed to the railing. Like something out of Saw.

The scene was set. The tension bubbling.

For the first 45 minutes I was transfixed, especially when John Goodman made his introduction. He was fantastic as Howard. Channeling his inner Kathy Bates. A return to form from the big man.

A ticking time bomb waiting to explode. A nuclear fall out whack job or genuine Samaritan?

I loved the Misery style cat and mouse game as Michelle tried to piece together everything that had happened. The questions mounting; was there an attack? Are they the only survivors?
It was good to see the underrated John Gallagher Jr (The Newsroom) get a meatier role to sink his teeth into as Emmett. Was he in on the act with Howard? Or another abductee like Michelle?

In all fairness, I couldn’t fault any of the performances. A crucial factor as the film relied solely on the three actors. Winstead was brilliant. She carried the film when the pace dragged, which it tragically did in places.

After the hour marker, I felt the film was running out of steam as Michelle began to accept her new life with this dysfunctional nuclear family.

Thankfully, the paranoia and suspense finally delivered as Howard’s lies became more transparent.

His concern for Michelle bordered on creepy Freudian levels as a silly game of “Who Am I?” unearthed some strange feelings. Unable to see Michelle as a woman BUT a young girl after losing his daughter.

That scene had me on tenterhooks. Goodman was intense. His “I’m always watching” conversation should have been ripe for a parody from Monster’s Inc (The Goodman link up was completely unintentional) BUT it was too unsettling as you feared the worst for Michelle.

To be honest up until the 80 minute marker, the post-apocalyptic bunker thriller had potential to hold its own as Michelle played the waiting game.

BUT then you realised that this had Cloverfield in the title. So things were about to get weird as Michelle plotted her escape.

There were a few twists BUT the finale felt tacked on and rushed for my liking. After all that slow burning tension and suspense, the teasing failed to deliver the goods for me.

It didn’t feel like a Cloverfield movie. The film’s greatest strength BUT also its greatest weakness as I felt the writers (One of them being none other than La La Land’s Damien Chazelle) quickly had to throw something in to tie this entry into the Cloverfield universe.

Don’t get me wrong, it was frenetic and racy BUT also chaotic and messy. A little disappointing with a silly open ending. Only because the following sequel we received was The Cloverfield Paradox. Sheesh!

BUT despite my grumblings, this was still a highly engaging and suspenseful thriller worthy of your time.

3/5

Tagged 10 Cloverfield Lane, Bear McCreary, Bradley Cooper, Cloverfield, Damien Chazelle, Dan Trachtenberg, Hitchcock, Janet Leigh, John Gallagher Jr, John Goodman, Kathy Bates, La La Land, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Misery, Monsters Inc, Psycho, Saw, The Cloverfield Paradox, The Newsroom

*NEW* THE FOREST REVIEW *NEW*

Run to the hills . . . Avoid this movie!

A woman (Natalie Dormer) goes into Japan’s Suicide Forest to find her twin sister (Also Natalie Dormer) and confronts supernatural terror.

Dull, boring and laughable. I think Miss Dormer better stick with Game of Thrones. Another intriguing premise thrown down the gutter.

Credit where it is due. Dormer delivered the best performance that she could with the weak characters and cliched dialogue.

I really wanted the film to explore the mystery behind the Aokigahara Forest. Deemed the Suicide Forest. A forest so dense that it shuts out all natural sound. Making it a good site for suicide as no one can hear the acts take place. Believe me, I was freaked out by that paragraph alone on Wikipedia than I was with this movie.

The potential for a dark and psychological thriller squandered and replaced with a generic fright fest with little tension, predictable jumps and a twist you could see coming a mile off. 93 minutes? It felt a whole lot longer than that.

Despite Mattias Troelstrup’s beautifully shot cinematography and the creepy backdrop, The Forest was a coma-inducing bomb. The film flicked back and forth as Dormer’s Sara seeks Dorma’s Jess. The cliched flashbacks with her doppelganger twin were nauseating. Corny and unnecessary. Adding nothing to the mix.

When we weren’t exposed to these flashbacks, we had slow meandering shots of the woods with creepy trinkets popping up combined with lifeless dialogue between one dimensional characters that you couldn’t give two monkeys about.

Yukiyoshi Ozawa did his best to create a little suspense as the forest guide with his chilling ghost stories. Things finally picked up when Jess strayed from the path. A path that Ozawa repeatedly insisted she stayed on. BUT of course, what does she do?

The eeriness surrounding the Forest and the loss of time was a nice gimmick. BUT it never really got going. I could feel my eyes drooping. Reprieved by a few jumpy bits to keep me on my toes. A chance meeting involving a dark hallway in a remote hostel soon woke me out of my slumber. For a brief moment.

Taylor Kinney (Zero Dark Thirty) wasn’t strong enough or creepy enough to create any real threat or interest as the mysterious journalist that Jess meets along the way. The paranoia finally settling in thick and fast. BUT by the end I really didn’t care.

It took too long to get going. And when it did, you really wished you hadn’t bothered. Considering it had a $10 million budget, the effects were dreadful. Random extras popping up with manky fancy dress masks howling stupid noises really didn’t help matters.

And the finale offered a little of what I had expected. BUT it was rushed and far too frenetic. You also realised that the plot didn’t make any sense and the incredibly OTT score by Bear McCreary made it even more comical than it should have been.

A real mess. I’d wait for this to haunt the Horror Channel.

2/5