A Keaton Review: The Cloverfield Paradox

By: Keaton Marcus

Genre/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Age Rating/14+

Lemonradar/23% D-sour

Introduction

Hi, this is Keaton Marcus from Sweet and Sour Movie Reviews and today I will be reviewing the newest surprise release from the Cloverfield franchise, The Cloverfield Paradox. In the future year of 2028 when almost all of Earth’s whole power supply goes out NASA sends a team of six brave astronauts to conduct an experiment called The Cloverfield Paradox that may or may not restore all power to Planet Earth with their ship The Shepherd which is a particle accelerator surrounding Cloverfield Space Station, we focus on one crew member named Ava Hamilton who has lost her kids to a dreadful fire many years ago while fretting to go back to Michael, her husband.

How Was The Cast?

If you see this particular movie you realize that you have never really heard of this cast before, well let me tell you that this was a brilliant choice of actors, the problem is they really did not use them in the right way at all making them just the center of mixed up, muddled genres that linger within the film. The first main character that we really focus on is Ava Hamilton, the mother of two dead children played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Ms. Raw was a very smart and peculiar decision for the very important role which I really liked in the beginning of the movie, but as the film got longer and went on Mbatha-Raw had some problems; The director really got confused and messed her amazing talent up which in my POV is impossible, Raw also did not quite fit towards the genre and is really not the best actress at going out of her comfort zone with a career that consists of Jupiter Ascending, Concussion and Beauty and the Beast; Although Ms. Raw did have quite a tough time getting over the fact that she was ruined by the director, she was still a good fit for the character Ava Hamilton even though it was completely remotely out of her main comfort zone, but saying that leads to the very truthful fact of even though she was a solid choice, Raw does not belong in an alien movie. Then there is the captain and commander of the mission Kiel played by David Oyelowo who also ended up quite an odd but special decision for this film. As I said just before Oyelowo was another good and healthy choice for the commander Kiel not just because it brings out the diversity level more but it is creative to choose a non-superstar; Then again Mr. Oyelowo was still very muddled in the awful directing of a very cool premise which instead of showing his real talents Oyelowo looked like he did not know what he was doing in the movie giving an even worse, wrong perspective to the audience, going back to his career you will see Queen of Katwe, Jack Reacher, Selma, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Interstellar which even gives him the power of having already done a Sci-Fi Thriller which sadly still cannot save him from bad directing, script and plot. Thirdly there is Schmidt played by Daniel Brühl who continued the cool tradition of creative casting. Brül again might have helped the cast with his amazing appearance and talents, but they were again blindsided by all the movie’s main flaws and challenges making him another robot actor in this truly desperate to please toxic movie that cannot get it’s cast to shine; Although this is definitely true Brül did have a few tricks up his sleeve with his good presence and familiarity on the screen that made him watchable at all. Fourthly and lastly there is the comedy of the film, Mundy who is played by good old Chris O’Dowd. O’Dowd may be quite helpful to this group of confused people, but that is still nowhere enough to prevent the actual qualities you need to a good movie from completely bombing even with O’Dowd’s classic jokes and little spurts of joy The Cloverfield Paradox just gets more and more pitiful by the minute. If you look at the paragraph on a whole scale there is not much joy in it with Gugu Mbatha-Raw really not fitting in the film, David Oyelowo being ruined by a bad script, Daniel Brül was blinded by the movie’s lack of smarts and finally Chris O’Dowd did have some decent laughs but he could not save the disappointing movie overall.

Quality

Here comes the real judgement to the movie, the overall quality based on all the qualities the film needs, the directing, the plot, the story, and the visuals/cinematography combination. Starting with the directing we have Julius Onah, a relatively new creator of movies. The directing was truly the worst part to the movie, Onah stupidly surprised released this muddled movie and filled it pure garbage, there is no story, plot, developed characters or well-written drama, suspense and horror making this poorly executed movie into a piece of trash; Again Onah does have some talents at least with brilliant casting, but that does not help the real concept that the movie was trying to make not only ruining the entirety of the movie, the whole entire cast just crashed; Though this might be the directors fault 100% you cannot blame the fact that Onah is a really new filmmaker that is just getting used to the process of all of these judgements despite him not working with the film in the right way, my final suggestion is they have gotten not just a more experienced director, one that has made some movies that consist of the same genre. The greatest treasure for all Sci-Fi movies, visuals, despite all the drama with the bad directing the special effects were one thing that the movie got right giving any audience a real creative, but simple world to imagine which even though is to be pretty bad considering that the rest of the movie is just pure boredom it might give some people the entertainment they need making this the strongest and only positive part about the movie which combining that with the amazing cinematography by Dan Mindel giving this handsomely produced, but muddled film a little life. Then there is the storyline and plot, really the whole creating experience to the movie. Despite the positives I had just stated about the movie’s keen visuals, there are many more problems to go with the most important thing to make a good film, smarts which of nothing consists to this awful movie, what I mean is no real storyline, the premise is quite spectacular given the fact that it is apart of a critically-acclaimed franchise does not really save the film from the bland writing, and really bad muddled, confused genres all mixed together into one pile of badness bringing the movie down a big fat notch; What I am really trying to say here is that Paradox has no smarts that ever have to do with the great premise and truly exciting synopsis. In the whole the quality might be the movie’s greatest weakness with directing as rotten as dirty underwear and too many confusing and complicated genres combined making it not only hard to follow, but just plain stupid.

Aging ‘The Shepherd’

The last paragraph contains of the also very important choice on whether this space trash is okay for the kids or not. The violence consists of many things your kids may not be consent with seeing including some very emotional deaths in semi-gruesome ways of main characters that consist of some disturbing bloody scenes that are a bit disconcerting at a couple of parts, but the director never quite pushes it to R-Rated levels and some gun shots, this really sums up any action or violence that lingers in the movie. Next there is some very mild bad language including one use of s..t, f...ing, hell and jesus christ, but nothing that strays to much from PG-13 Sci-Fi Horror movies. For the last piece, is there any sexuality or adult situations that are in the movie, to really get the overall perspective there is nothing that consists in the movie that has to do with sex bringing the level down to everything but knowing that there are relationships between characters.

Sci-Fi Smackdown

The Cloverfield Paradox 23% D-sour

Violence: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Sex: ☆☆☆☆☆

Language: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆

Age Rating: 14+

Alien: Covenant 64% sweet/sour

Violence: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Sex: ⭐⭐☆☆☆

Language: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Age Rating: 15+
 

The Cloverfield Paradox 23% D-sour

Storyline: ⭐☆☆☆☆

Cast: ⭐⭐☆☆☆

Role Models: ⭐⭐☆☆☆

Alien: Covenant 64% sweet/sour

Storyline: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆

Cast: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆

Role Models: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆

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