There is not a moment wasted in “The Cloverfield Paradox,” and that includes its surprise, Super Bowl Sunday release on Netflix, with only a thirty-second TV spot dropping during the game to prepare audiences. Within the opening minutes of the latest addition to the franchise, we’re told everything we need to know: with Earth facing a massive energy crisis, Hamilton (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), with the encouragement of her husband Michael (Roger Davies), puts aside the pain of a personal tragedy, to embark on a last ditch effort to save all life on Earth. She joins a ragtag team of international scientists on a space station where they hope a high-tech particle accelerator named The Shepherd will create an endless supply of free energy. The science is hazy, but you won’t spend too much time thinking about it, because pretty soon things get very freaky.
The screenplay by Oren Uziel (“22 Jump Street”) isn’t too concerned with reinventing the wheel when it comes to the basic genre requirements the story needs. The ensemble of astronauts all slot into familiar archetypes including The Funny One (Chris O’Dowd), The Antagonist (Aksel Hennie), and The Stoic Leader (David Oyelowo). Credit to the script, because even if the characters are constructed as shells to move around the board, what happens to them is far more interesting, ranging from jaw-dropping to absurd, often in the same beat. Whether it’s clever marketing or Netflix dumping a movie that Paramount couldn’t justify giving a theatrical release (I’ll let the internet have that argument), the greatest benefit of the shock release of “The Cloverfield Paradox” is that going in cold makes the most out of the film’s bonkers turns.
That being said, director Julius Onah, making his first, big Hollywood production, plays the picture straight-faced to a fault. It’s not every day that a sci-fi movie will make you think of “The Addams Family,” but each time “The Cloverfield Paradox” leans campy and “The Twilight Zone”-style strange, Onah disappointingly throws the picture back into gravity. Cinema is rife with crew-on-a-space-station thrillers, but there’s little pleasure in grimly going through those tried and true mechanics here, particularly when they’re this uninspired. The picture comes alive each time it boldly, hilariously, and weirdly moves away from that formula but it never goes far enough. For all the genuine intrigue that develops from the truly bizarre occurrences that unfold early in the movie, it fizzles out with a tacked on, franchise threading, Earth-bound subplot involving Michael, and an unconvincing pivot to an emotional arc for Hamilton, that never quite resonates. In fact, the true paradox of this movie is that those enjoyably wild twists alone would’ve made this film a whole lot of fun to watch with a big multiplex audience, even as inconsistent and ultimately illogical it turns out to be.
If the name brand talent assembled in front of the camera (which also includes Daniel Bruhl, John Ortiz, Zhang Ziyi, and Elizabeth Debicki) give more weight to the material than it deserves, behind the camera it’s a whole other story. The cinematography by Dan Mindel — J.J. Abrams’ blockbuster hand behind “Mission: Impossible III,” “Star Trek,” “Star Trek Into Darkness,” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” — is woefully uninspired, and at times, glaringly television like. It’s a thorough disappointment, and leaves a picture that could’ve used more visual punch, severely lacking. That also goes for the costume design from Oscar winner Colleen Atwood (“Chicago,” “Memoirs Of A Geisha,” “Alice In Wonderland,” “Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them”) who dresses up the space station crew in some fairly routine, militaristic garb; there’s absolutely zero reinvention to the type of uniforms we’ve seen these kinds of characters wear in countless pictures. If there’s any bright spot in the below-the-line talent, it’s composer Bear McCreary, who delivers a score that’s often more exciting than the picture it’s backing.
The “Cloverfield” movies to date have succeeded from making the most from their lean construction. The found footage aesthetic meets monster movie terror was deployed to clever effect in the original, while “10 Cloverfield Lane” raised goosebumps by steeping itself in a paranoid atmosphere. Unfortunately, “The Cloverfield Paradox” overthinks and overcooks the recipe. When the film ends with an audacious swing for the cheap seats, you realize it’s the kind of confident, ballsy popcorn moment that the entire movie needed more of. [C+]