THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX (2018)

Studio:       Netflix
Director:    Julius Onah
Writer:       Oren Uziel, Doug Jung
Producer:  J.J. Abrams, Lindsey Weber
Stars:     Daniel Bruhl, Elizabeth Debicki, Aksel Hennie, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chris O’Dowd, John Ortiz, David Oyelowo, Zhang Ziyi, Roger Davies, Clover Nee

Review Score:

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Summary:

An international team of astronauts experimenting with particle acceleration inadvertently creates a rip in reality.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

With the world on the brink of war from facing complete energy resource depletion, Michael convinces his grieving wife Ava Hamilton to join an international team of astronauts dedicated to resolving the crisis. Ava goes to the Cloverfield Space Station with Commander Kiel, Monk Acosta, Schmidt, Volkov, Tam, and Mundy to test the Shepard particle accelerator, which could create free energy if the crew’s experiments are successful.

Still encountering failure two years into their mission, tensions flare among the crew. On Earth, author Mark Stambler warns the public about ‘The Cloverfield Paradox,’ claiming that the accelerator’s unprecedented power risks ripping the membrane of space-time, endangering reality by smashing multiple dimensions together and potentially unleashing monsters.

The crew’s 47th test finally yields a positive energy flow. However, the Shepard overloads, causing severe damage throughout the space station. After the crew recovers, they realize that planet Earth seemingly disappeared.

Kiel tasks everyone with repair duties to ensure their survival. Ava discovers that the gyro that powers the accelerator inexplicably vanished.

The crew hears screams coming from inside a wall. They remove a panel and find an injured woman, later identified as Mina Jensen, fused with circuitry. After being cut free, Jensen begins accelerated healing in the medlab.

Back on Earth, Michael witnesses explosions as the sudden arrival of a giant monster begins creating widespread panic.

Volkov’s eye suddenly turns sideways while he examines himself in a mirror. After hearing a voice speaking to him inside his head, Volkov uses a 3D printer to create a gun.

Accusing the German physicist of sabotage, Volkov confronts Schmidt and his girlfriend Tam at gunpoint as they conduct work on X-Deck. Volkov suddenly goes into rabid convulsions. When Schmidt and Tam take him to the others, Volkov spits up hundreds of worms that vanished from the science bay. Volkov dies.

Ava notices that a photograph of their crew now includes Jensen. Meanwhile, Jensen recovers. Jensen, Ava, and the others eventually conclude that Jensen belongs to the parallel reality where the space station now exists. Recognizing everyone except for Tam, Jensen explains that in her reality, she is the Shepard engineer, not Tam. Jensen adds that Ava is a close friend, but should be on Earth with her family as a civilian coordinator. Jensen also warns that Schmidt betrayed the team by sabotaging the station.

Kiel finds communication logs indicating collusion between Schmidt and German intelligence. Kiel accuses Schmidt of intentionally keeping Shepard offline until Russia completely destabilized due to the energy crisis. Although Schmidt professes his innocence, Kiel confines him to an airlock.

On Earth, Michael learns that Cloverfield station seemingly disappeared from space. Michael rescues a little girl named Molly from a ruined building destroyed by a giant creature.

Mundy’s arm becomes caught in a wall panel whose solid state suddenly turns malleable. Kiel and Ava pull Mundy free, although his arm disappears from his body without causing physical pain.

Schmidt summons the crew to the airlock when he sees Mundy’s arm crawling on the ground. Schmidt concludes that they are witnessing the paradox in action, as two realities are fighting to occupy the same space.

Mundy’s arm writes the message, “cut Volkov open.” Inside Volkov’s torso, Tam finds the missing gyro. Ava puts the power source back in place to discover that Earth did not disappear. Rather, the space station moved to the other side of the sun.

Transmissions from Earth confirm that the crew traveled to an alternate dimension where Earth is at war and the space station was destroyed. Although they discuss if they should try traveling to this Earth, the astronauts ultimately decide to activate the Shepard again in hopes it will bring them back to their reality and undo the damage caused.

While trying to find Molly’s parents, Michael seeks safety in his friend Peter’s underground shelter. On the station, Jensen makes accusatory comments to Monk about the Shepard smashing a Higgs boson and trapping her in a different dimension.

Schmidt and Tam work on the ventilation system to remove condensation interfering with calculations. Tam becomes trapped in a flooding airlock. Tam dies when a hull breach causes the water to instantly freeze. Ava later points out that Jensen is qualified to assume Tam’s position.

Michael learns more about the paradox as well as the space station’s disappearance from his friend Joe. Michael asks Joe to contact Molly’s parents Andrew and Nancy. Michael hears a creature roar outside.

Jensen begins repairing the Shepard particle accelerator. Ava confides in Jensen that her children Isaac and Ayana died as a result of her installing an illegal power cell that started a house fire. Jensen tells Ava that in her reality, Ava’s family is still alive on Earth, which is why the alternate Ava never went to the space station.

Ava tells Kiel that she will aid the return mission, but wants a pod to stay in this reality and return to her family. Kiel points out that her parallel family already has an Ava. Ava counters that she doesn’t want her doppelganger to make the same fatal mistake she did.

Mundy executes a plan to temporarily shut off the oxygen supply in order to push more power to the accelerator. A sudden magnetic pull initiates a carbon dioxide explosion, killing Mundy while destroying a large part of the station.

Kiel, Ava, and Monk don space suits to decouple the maintenance ring before the station can fully destabilize. Realizing that the task has to be performed manually, Kiel gives his life to detach the ring. Kiel and the ring float into space.

On Earth, Joe tells Michael that he contacted Molly’s parents. Michael watches old videos of Ava before recording a video diary for her.

Ava initiates a plan to fire the Shepard once to overload the accelerator and take them home, and then a second time to provide the energy they need. Ava instructs Jensen to copy the data so that she can bring it home and help her Earth.

Jensen recovers the gun that Volkov created. Jensen knocks Ava unconscious as Ava prepares to launch her shuttle pod to Earth.

Jensen confronts Monk at gunpoint. When he refuses to let her have the particle accelerator, Jensen shoots Monk.

Jensen wounds Schmidt with another shot from her weapon. Having recovered and aborted her launch, Ava returns to confront Jensen. Jensen explains that she needs the Shepard to save her world since their accelerator was already destroyed. Jensen reasons that Ava’s crew displaced hers anyway, and killing them can save eight billion lives.

Schmidt recovers to fight back against Jensen. Ava flees to activate the accelerator. Jensen shoots Schmidt again before chasing after Ava.

Jensen and Ava fight. Gunfire depressurizes the room, sucking Jensen out into the vacuum of space.

Ava removes the bullets from Schmidt, who recovers. Ava sends detailed Shepard schematics to the other Ava while also recording a warning about the unstable power cell in her house.

Ava and Schmidt fire the Shepard, which returns them to their reality. A second firing results in a stable energy beam. Before HQ in Huntsville can warn them about the monsters overtaking Earth, communications are lost. While Ava and Schmidt prepare a pod for their return, Michael futilely pleads with ground control to warn his wife not to come back. As the pod descends toward the ground, a giant monster appears from beneath dense cloud coverage.

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Review:

Earth’s best hope of avoiding all out war lies aboard the Cloverfield Space Station.  There, seven international astronauts endeavor to operate an experimental particle accelerator known as the Shepard.  If successful, the Shepard could generate enough power to solve the global energy crisis that has countless countries at each other’s throats.

One small problem: over the course of two years, the science-minded crew has failed every one of their 46 firing attempts.  One big problem: if they do manage to smash a Higgs boson, at least one expert claims Cloverfield could rip the fabric of space-time, causing multiple dimensions to intersect while possibly unleashing chaotic creatures.

That seems to be a far out theory until the Shepard finally fires its first beam.  The resulting overload not only devastates the station, but it seemingly blinks Earth out of existence.  Stranger still, the team earns a new member when a mysterious woman materializes inside a wall.  As inexplicable events continue compounding their confusion, the Cloverfield crew comes to suspect the paradox they feared has come to fruition in the form of an altered reality.

Supposedly, the project previously known as “God Particle” was reworked into “The Cloverfield Paradox” at a script level during the film’s production.  Suspiciously, it looks like the transformation actually took place in the editing room, as cutaway scenes constituting a loose Cloverfield connection feel more forcibly included than dad’s mistress at a family reunion.

SPOILERS

That loose connection concerns a husband, Michael, left behind by Cloverfield astronaut Ava, whose outer space experiments did more than transport her to a parallel dimension.  The accelerator overload also unleashed massive monsters back home on Earth.  While Ava and the others work to restore their reality, Michael navigates rubble, rescues a random orphan, and hides from kaiju in a fallout shelter during non-sequitur segments jarringly juxtaposed with the space station scenes.

Michael’s story stays so far off to the side, it may as well be from a separate movie.  Essentially, it is.

END SPOILERS

Characters aboard the eponymous space station conspicuously never say the word ‘Cloverfield.’  In fact, all of the station’s branding, included embroidered patches on everyone’s jumpsuits, read ‘Helios.’  We can argue over what ‘Helios’ might mean to reference yet the fact remains, “The Cloverfield Paradox” smashes two ill-fitting fictions together in a bizarro parallel of the dimension-colliding plot.

Remove the Cloverfield connection, an easy enough option if one excises Michael’s moments along with an exposition-dumping Donal Logue cameo, and “The Cloverfield Paradox” admittedly isn’t the most unique piece of science-fiction.  Sabotage from a secret mutineer, a heroic moment of self-sacrifice, and a body-bursting bit of bloody horror are just some of the been-down-this-road-before beats borrowed from other movies.  “The Cloverfield Paradox” melds “The Martian” with “Gravity” (review here) with “Event Horizon” for cinematic style closer in spirit to “Alien” than to “Cloverfield.”

But I’m more lenient on the movie than other critics because when you separate its substance from the hullaballoo about surprise Super Bowl drops and shoehorned shared universe claptrap, “The Cloverfield Paradox” sustains engagement without being particularly novel.  After enduring the fatigue of underwhelming outer space adventures from its immediate predecessors “Life” (review here) and “Alien: Covenant” (review here), “The Cloverfield Paradox” stands out for having more memorable moments, deeper drama, and better characters.

Name one of the astronauts in “Life.”  How many people constituted the crew of “Alien: Covenant?”  Forgetfulness will affect “The Cloverfield Paradox” in time too, though its cast has enough collective charisma to keep energy charged.  With eight main characters, nine counting Michael on the ground, some suffer the unavoidable side effect of not enough development.  Those that do launch individual arcs off the ground gain additional distance from a talented cast of diverse performers.  These actors sell human emotion underneath the story even when it drowns in monster-related mania.

I’ll concede to the criticism that “The Cloverfield Paradox” can come across like a long “Star Trek” episode whose bumped-up budget lends a sharper than usual look.  And a brief spotlight on comic Chris O’Dowd’s sentient severed arm features the kind of flourish “The Cloverfield Paradox” could use more of.  But the movie applies its strong cast to a compelling concept and reaps the rewards of executing entertaining space suspense.

My favorable review score compensates for the unfair overlay of Cloverfield’s brand.  It’s not “God Particle’s” fault that its intriguing “where did planet Earth go?” subplot never bears weight.  “The Cloverfield Project” deflates that balloon by repeatedly boring us with Michael’s text message adventures.

As with “10 Cloverfield Lane” (review here), an insistence on establishing some semblance of a shared universe does more harm than good by being applied when it isn’t earned.  Expectations associated with “Cloverfield” skew perception in ways these pseudo-sequels don’t deserve.  A flimsy final minute reinforces that “The Cloverfield Paradox” is a pretty solid standalone story marred by having to double as a pretty poor Cloverfield spinoff.

I’m all for connecting each Cloverfield entry together in a manner that makes sense.  In the meantime, maybe it’s better to stop trying so hard to link unrelated thrillers to a behemoth beast’s origin from a “found footage” film with faded relevance.

Review Score:  70

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