In 2008 J.J. Abrams put out a movie that was overwhelmingly met with accolades in Cloverfield. This surprised me because it was a really bad found footage movie that made me think Damon Lindelhof must have been the creative force behind Lost. It was a mess. Because in the middle of an apocalyptic event, how many people are going to primarily be concerned with recording the meaningless moments in hallways as strangers find themselves frightened for their lives? But this movie was a hit. And then he did a remake of Star Trek. And it was a hit. And then he did a remake of Star Wars (77). And it was a hit (mostly.) To say the least, outside of Lost, I have not been a fan of his.

So when a sequel to Cloverfield came along, I ignored it. And then a third came along, and I ignored it. But this week I saw a brief clip from Cloverfield Paradox and was intrigued.

So jumping into the movie… In an undisclosed future, Earth is experiencing an energy crisis. In response to this, an experimental space station called Shepard has gone into orbit with a potential answer. It was viewed as too dangerous to try on the planet though.

So we have a crew on a space station trying to solve the world’s problems. But this ties into Cloverfield. A monster apocalypse movie. In the past of the history of Earth. So there is a bit of a paradox going on. OH, hence the name (I was already there, just using this moment for dramatic effect.) But how does this fit in?

As the crew gets Shepard online and running, there is a catastrophic failure. (Well, it’s not too catastrophic because they fix it pretty easily.) The result of this failure is that the Earth is no longer there. And then they find a woman embedded into the wiring and tubing of a wall! A wild moment. Especially as she was not a member of the crew. But she knows Eva Hamilton, one of the crew members. Eva doesn’t know her though. This mystery reeled me in. I wanted to understand what was happening. But there was more. They figure out what happened. Sort of. Earth is way over there. Somehow they flipped positions in orbit of the sun, making them as far as possible from Earth but still in the same geosynchronous orbit with the sun. This lets them reorient communications antennas. And the news they get from Earth is disturbing. Because Shephard crashed into the ocean. But they didn’t.

Things begin to get weird. And if you know me, you know that I revel in the moments where things get weird in movies. I don’t want to get into all the weird, but I spoilered one in the picture above. Crewman Mundy is fixing something on the wall when the wall suddenly sucks his hand into the wall. As he tries to free it, more is pulled in. Assistance arrives to find him fighting the wall that has his arm up to the shoulder. Finally they manage to yank him free, only to find that his arm is gone. Cleanly cut with no blood. Just gone. Maybe 10 minutes later another crewman finds the arm crawling along the deck. Still alive and ambulating along as though nothing strange was occurring. I loved the surreal nature of this. Especially as Mundy arrives in the hall and upon seeing his arm he declares simply “That’s my arm.” As casually as he might have if it was his missing sock.

The gist of the story here is that when they fired Shepard up, they caused a problem. Crossing into a different parallel universe. One where the world was at war. The woman in the wall is from the other Shepard. And they agree to launch her in an escape pod just before firing up again to return home. They figured out how to get back. And the damage wasn’t enough to stop them. But then an actual catastrophe happens and a huge portion of the station blows up and breaks away, creating a situation where they have to rethink how to survive. Several do. And several don’t. And several had already not survived by this point anyway, so the cast was shrinking already. The survivors make a minor adjustment and then fire up again. Apparently all that extra bits of the station that blew up weren’t very important. And the rest of the crew was superfluous as well since the two were able to get it running easily.

And boom! We are back to the proper Earth. Well, they are, we never left our proper Earth (at least most of us didn’t.) And they flee the station in an escape pod to an Earth overrun by monsters. Earth couldn’t warn them though because apparently the communications receiver antenna must have been on the 80% of the station that blew up. Ooops.

Now what makes this so much more fascinating to me is that the incident depicted in this movie caused the original movie to happen, even though in the timeline of the Shepard that never happened. Until it did, and then I guess it had always happened happened. So welcome to Earth, hope you survive.

Now what also makes this fascinating to me is that both the sequel 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox were movies that had nothing to do with the original movie. But the parent production company decided to make some tweaks and pull them into a franchise world. According to sources A Quiet Place was also supposed to be pulled in to the Cloverfield world, but they decided to keep it separate. Perhaps due to Paradox getting panned hard. Which surprises me. For me this movie had a genuine sense of dread much like the original Alien. And I want to give Abrams crap about remaking another classic movie, but this isn’t really his film, so I won’t. I really like the idea of something happening in the present day (well the future really, more or less) that actually causes the past to change in the way this did. It actually makes me want to punish myself and go watch the original, and then the sequel. Both of which were much better received than the third.

For today though, I give this a solid 8 stars. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Had me on the edge of my seat. And who knows, maybe that almost 20 year old found footage film might creep up past the 1 star memory it currently has in my brain. Hmmm, I wonder if I reviewed it for Horror-Web back then. Maybe. 2008 is when I took control of Horror-Web. ( I just checked thank to the Wayback Machine and I apparently did not review it. Which makes sense because it came out about 6 months before I took over.)