What Is This Film And Why Does It Exist?

This film broke me.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not caught up on the Cloverfield universe, I haven’t seen either of the previous two films but from what I can tell from people I know The Cloverfield Paradox is just as awful, if not more so, if you have. How anyone thought this was good enough to release absolutely baffles me, nothing in it makes sense and nothing feels like it matters in any way. I suggest you spare yourself the trouble of watching this film so I’m not going to avidly avoid spoilers, I'll try to keep them to minimum but if for some reason you’re curious about it and want to experience this atrocity for yourself, this is your spoiler warning.

For such a ridiculous premise, this movie sets up in the most boring way. You’re introduced to the main character and her husband and the movie makes no effort to make you care about them, or if it does it sure as hell doesn’t work. Every character is so bland, no one really stands out, despite the great cast they assembled for the project.

So the general story seems to be that the world is running out of fuel and they’ve discovered a way to get some kind of sustainable energy that will last forever but they have to use this big machine but it isn’t working. I can’t remember if that’s even correct because this movie is both super confusing and totally forgettable. The Russian guy thinks the German guy is a traitor, apparently everyone on earth is at war or something and Donal Logue has some weird theory about how this machine could merge dimensions and release monsters onto earth but this is never explained. It’s obvious that the only reason this theory is mentioned is because it will come true but there is no in movie explanation as to why that should be the case. That’s kind of a theme of this movie, things are just said or things just happen for no reason and nothing is ever explained in any satisfactory way.

What happens is that they use the machine and, surprise surprise, Donal Logue’s dumb theory turns out to be true and they get transported to another dimension or the dimensions merge, again this isn’t really explained because the earth they’re above is different but they’re the same but some things from the other dimension bleed over into their space station. One thing that bleeds over is a new crew member, she appears trapped in the walls and the have to free her. This could have been an interesting premise if they had left it at that and explored the interactions between the crew and this outsider, maybe made it into an Alien style horror movie but the villain is a human. However, rather than explore the interesting repercussions of this woman suddenly switching dimensions, they just do random weird stuff instead.

Chris O’Dowd’s arm gets sucked into the wall. Apparently this happens in both dimensions as the arm of his alternate dimension self appears in their space station. For some reason this arm has consciousness, perhaps all arms are sentient in the other universe but the new crew member’s arms seem to do what she tells them so probably not. The arm, despite not having a brain, has knowledge about the other dimension and lots of other handy (no pun intended) things.

The crew has a worm farm but the worms disappear. Also an important part of the station’s console disappears. Logically this would mean that they would have gone to the other dimension but no, when they perform an autopsy on a dead crew member, they find them in their body. Now let’s break this down. How, if two dimensions had merged, would something from one dimension disappear and, rather than moving to the other dimension, reappear in the body of a person in the same dimension. All I can imagine is that the alternate dimension guy was dared to eat the worms and swallow a very large mechanical part whole and that these transferred into the body of his original dimension counterpart.

Already I presume you’re as baffled as I am by the choices this movie makes and I haven’t even mentioned the magnetic putty seeming to come alive and eat a crew member. Nothing in this film is

explained, it just does things and expects you to be ok with it. The biggest example of this is their link to the Cloverfield universe. Thought the film we’ve been cutting back to the lead characters husband as

weird stuff happens off screen. At the very end of the film, the remaining crew members announce they are coming home to earth and the husband is telling them not to because the world’s gone weird. We then cut to an escape pod fall through the clouds and then...BOOM! GIANT CLOVERFIELD MONSTER! But why? Is this an origin? Was the monster in the other dimension? Who knows? This film is set in the future so this in no way explains how the monster got to earth in 2008 so what’s the point? Do they not remember the 2008 monster or the weird 2016 alien stuff?

I hate this film.

NO TEETH ON THIS GOOSE!