Is this thing going anywhere?
It’s worth remembering just how much of a stir the trailer for Cloverfield caused when it first appeared in the summer of 2007.
Only, back then, we didn’t know that name. We didn’t recognise any big stars, and we didn’t really know what it was.
Clip via OnlineMovieForum
None of that mattered, though, because the trailer got its hooks into just about everyone who saw it.
Smash cut to January 2008, when the relatively low-budget ($25 million) picture quickly became a household name.
As with The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield didn’t quite invent – or even especially reinvent – the ‘found footage’ genre, but it gave a relatively unexplored avenue of Hollywood a high-profile boost, even if it did ultimately usher in a wave of uninspired copycats as producers scrambled to chase the hottest new dollar in town.
Cloverfield worked because it felt like an original. It stood out. It was something new. You forgave bad dialogue and questionable acting because the filmmakers did a good enough job of placing you in a the heart of a terrifying moment, keeping you moving from one barely-glimpsed terror to the next.
Looking back over photos captured at the film’s Los Angeles premiere makes for a kind of hilarious/grim ‘Who’s Who’ of the time. Lindsay Lohan. The cast of The Hills. A couple of dudes from LOST. Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson. Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle. The Japanese guy from Heroes. Someone from One Tree Hill. The sky was dark, for all the stars were out.
Cloverfield is pretty dark, too, in that you can’t really see anything for large stretches of the action. It’s a neat trick, one of many, and allows for total manipulation of the audience. Its well-designed monster is rarely seen, but always there somehow. As with great horror, less is more.
As with great horror, however, people demanded more. We can’t simply have nice things, we must dilute them.
Cloverfield doesn’t really make sense beyond its original 85 minutes, and it doesn’t need to. It also never needed a sequel, which is handy, as it still doesn’t have one, three films into a franchise that feels completely lost.
Which brings us to The Cloverfield Paradox.
Clip via Netflix UK & Ireland
Netflix may have shocked the world by releasing the trailer for the third instalment in the franchise during the Super Bowl, and making the whole thing available right after the game, but their shiny new toy is rather broken.
As is the case here, it’s not unheard of to take a project in development and add the DNA of an existing series, chopping and changing until it fits in.
Die Hard with a Vengeance was reworked from a spec script called Simon Says; an action vehicle first conceived with the late Brandon Lee in the lead role, while the first sequel to Saw was originally dismissed by studios for being too dark and too much like Saw, before being rejigged accordingly.
If 10 Cloverfield Lane – originally an independent horror known as The Cellar – was an example of tweaking and mostly getting away with it, The Cloverfield Paradox stumbles from the title on down.
Initially in the works as God Particle, the Netflix exclusive concerns a crew lost in space as they attempt to save the world while messing with particle accelerators that open up a new dimension and the associated horrors within.
So it’s Sunshine meets Event Horizon with a dash of Prometheus… and it’s wildly inferior to all of them (and let’s not forget, Prometheus is a fascinatingly terrible film.)
The Cloverfield Paradox isn’t even ‘fun’ bad, it’s just bad-bad. A great cast – Daniel Brühl, David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Zhang Ziyi, Chris O’Dowd, Elizabeth Debicki – is wasted and honestly insulted by a shockingly poor script, soundtracked by a score that belongs in a student film.
There is nothing original here, nothing exciting, and no justifiable reason to connect it to a larger piece. The attempts to do so are laughable, and the production stitches are painfully visible throughout.
A final shot is designed to rouse fans for an upcoming related fourth adventure – Overlord, due in October – but it feels tacked-on and tests the patience with a real,’Wait, that’s it?’ thud of a landing.
Setting aside the notion that ‘Film Twitter’ should be some kind of venerated institution, it’s honestly kind of astonishing that this is what Selma director Ava DuVernay was teasing on Sunday evening:
https://twitter.com/ava/status/960260249843216384
Her follow-up missive, hailing a huge Hollywood undertaking led by people of colour, does indeed speak to an admirable step in the right direction. You just wish it was for a film that mattered in any way.
https://twitter.com/ava/status/960307970750889984
Cloverfield, whatever it even is at this stage, works as a smoke-and-mirrors cult thing that gets people talking, while enjoying a larger sense of mystery.
It trades on nostalgia just a decade old, an odd reflection of modern pop culture. But the modern pop culture audience demands more, demands perfection, and it wants it now.
JJ Abrams and his team might eventually get it right and recapture the magic of 10 years ago, but everyone will likely be glued to season eight of Black Mirror by then.
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