The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

The Cloverfield Paradox is a film that got released on Netflix last month, produced by J.J.Abrams. It is about what happens in the near future — the world is suffering from a severe energy crisis and a global war is about to break out. A brave team of six goes up in space to switch an energy accelerator if it works, can save the world. Spending two years, and, numerous attempts the team finally manages to switch ON the energy accelerator and then everything goes south. They lose Earth, it is gone. One by one, strange things happen, crew members keep getting killed. Why this happens and did the crew survive?

The film starts out building your expectation, quickly you realise it is not going to meet that. There is no explanation given why renewable energy sources like Solar or Wind can’t be used — twenty years that could be considered fiction, but in 2018 we are already harnessing solar energy big time. The screenplay has a confused identity, is it a horror film or sci-fi film and this doesn’t work for me.

Overall, the film feels like a stretched version of a Star-Trek episode. You can give it a miss, even if you have a Netflix subscription.

Originally published at Venkatarangan’s blog.