The Cloverfield Paradox |
USA • 2018 • 102m •
  • Directed by: Julius Onah. • Starring: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Daniel Brühl, John Ortiz, Chris O'Dowd, Aksel Hennie, Ziyi Zhang, Elizabeth Debicki, Roger Davies, Clover Nee, Jordan Rivera, Michael Stokes III, Celeste Clark. • Music by: Bear McCreary.      After a scientific experiment aboard the space station involving a particle accelerator has unexpected results, the astronauts find themselves isolated. Following a horrible discovery the space station crew must fight for survival.
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And while admittedly about as scientifically credible as a superhero movie, it's not quite as dumb and far-fetched as many of the most scathing reviewers seem to think it is. What quite a few people apparently didn't get is that 'The Cloverfield Paradox' riffs on the very real hysteria that broke out a couple of years ago when the CERN in Geneva (Switzerland) conducted an experiment to find the Higgs Boson (aka the "God Particle" - which incidentally was also the film's original title.) The CERN scientists hoped to find the God Particle by simulating conditions in the Large Hadron Collider - the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth - that were supposedly similar to those in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang.
A lot of people worldwide got scared shîtless by that idea, because they thought such a simulation could have unpredictable and possibly catastrophic consequences, and a couple of scientists even tried to stop the experiment by filing a case to the European Human Rights Court. The wildest theories started popping up in the media, like the experiment would cause black holes that would suck up Earth or open doors into other dimensions; heck: even a portal to Hell was considered a possibility, allowing demons to roam the Earth. So of course it was only a matter of time until a genre film would exploit the idea of a particle accelerator accidentally causing a rift into other dimensions and parallel realities across the space-time continuum.
And let's be fair here for a moment: in the history of stupid ideas for movies - especially genre pictures - this certainly isn't the dumbest concept ever to base a sci-fihorror film on. Also, by putting a Cloverfield spin on it - which, btw, actually is kind of fitting given it offered the chance to explain how the creature from the first film "stranded" on earth - the filmmakers managed to get the film a kind of attention it otherwise certainly wouldn't have had. It was a smart marketing stunt (as was selling the movie to Netflix) and probably crucial to keeping the film cost effective and being able to put as much money as possible into the visual effects (the budget for the whole film was only 25 million, and practically the only P&A costs this film had was the Super Bowl ad).
What I also don't get is why people expect "hard" science from the kind of pulpy sci-fihorror movie 'The Cloverfield Paradox' clearly is; there's obviously nobody who knows what would or wouldn't happen if other dimensions and parallel universes existed, let alone how physics would behave if they somehow "crashed" into each other. And of course it's all speculation and characters behaving erratically: that's part of what makes those films FUN. And believe it or not, that's exactly what I had. But don't take my word for it, make up your own mind; chances are, if you're into genre picutures (where solid entries with very decent visual effects are few and far between), you'll experience a similar sensation.
P.S. In case you don't know whether to trust this review or not, just check out the lists below, and you'll see exactly what kinds of films I like:.
Review by gogoschka-1 from the Internet Movie Database.
Movie Database