"The Cloverfield Trilogy" - The Problem with Complexity | 5 Nights of Halloween #3

The Cloverfield trilogy is certainly something to behold. A film series like this one has never been attempted before. The Cloverfield trilogy started in 2008 with the eponymous found footage film Cloverfield. It received positive review from critics and became a relative success.

The film was created by J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves, and Drew Goddard, who all went from here into very successful film careers. The film was one of the first to implement internet viral marketing. Cloverfield revolves around a simple premise: a monster attacks New York city and disturbs a farewell party for one of the film's major characters. Chaos ensues.

The film became famous for its lack on information. It doesn't explain the origin of the monster, and never really tells the audience. There are so many little easter eggs and teasers in the marketing and the film itself that made fans hungry for a sequel that would explore these. A sequel seemed less and less likely until January 2016 rolled around.

The main cast of Cloverfield witnessing the destruction of
New York City.

Paramount pictures announced that a new Cloverfield would hit theatres that March, just over two months away. Entitled 10 Cloverfield Lane the film wouldn't be a directed sequel, instead, it would be a relative of the first film. A similar tone and premise. An alien invasion, a group of survivors, the end of the world.

"The spirit of it, the genre of it, the heart of it, the fear factor, the comedy factor, the weirdness factor, there were so many elements that felt like the DNA of this story were of the same place that Cloverfield was born out of,"   - J.J. Abrams on 10 Cloverfield Lane

The follow up earned less at the box office than its predecessor, but earned even better reviews. The film follows a group of three characters living in a bunker after an invasion of aliens. The relations in the group begin to break as the films primary antagonist, played by John Goodman, begins to show his true colours. Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Michelle escapes the bunker in the third act of the film, kills John Goodman's Howard, then takes on an alien. She hot wires an abandoned truck, picks up a distress call on the radio, then drives into the war torn city in the background of the shot to help the survivors.

Due to the success of this second installment, a third film was commissioned: The Cloverfield Paradox. The third film had a surprise release on Netflix in February of 2018 after previous reports said it would release theatrically in April of that year. Unlike the previous two, the film received poor reviews from critics and fans alike.

The main characters trapped in the bunker of 10 Cloverfield Lane.

The film tells a far more complex story than that of the previous two films. Paradox revolves around the crew of a space station called Cloverfield Station which houses a powerful particle accelerator. The earth is experiencing a massive energy crisis and if the station is successful, the energy from the collider could resolve the issue of power. The station ends up transporting the crew to a parallel universe, which creates some sort of rift in the universe, creating massive storms on the Earth. In the film's final shot, it is revealed that the rift in space also sent the monster from the original film to Earth.

And this is Paradox's fundamental flaw. This is why this movie fails where the others succeed: it's way to advanced and complex. Now complexity in a film isn't a bad thing. Often, it makes films even better, but we have an exception here. The horror of the Cloverfield comes from the unknown. In Cloverfield we don't know anything about the monster, its motives, or what this means for Earth. Every moment comes as a surprise.

10 Cloverfield Lane repeats the same thing. We don't actually see the end of the world. We don't know if Howard is telling the truth. We don't know what his motives are. We know he's a creepy dude, but we know nothing about him. Did the world actually end? What happened? What's outside of the bunker's solitary window. All of Howard's actions come as a surprise. Just when we think we've figured him out and Michelle's escaped from his literal den of lies, we are greeted by another twist: the world really did end. Aliens invaded and civilization as we know it is gone.

The crew of the Cloverfield Station.

The Cloverfield Paradox does none of this. It's purpose to answer questions and not to raise them. The Cloverfield movies succeed through the questions and ambiguity they leave us with. Paradox ends up setting the record straight. It tells us how everything came to be. It is too concerned with answers. It doesn't leave room for the first two's signature terror through the unknown.

All of this could have been easily avoided with a few simple edits to the script. The sci-fi fat could easily be trimmed. The insane story line could have been left more ambiguous. A few major details could have been left unanswered. We could have seen less and be far more satisfied. We know exactly what happened by the end of the film. Cloverfield doesn't operate on answers. It works on questions. This doesn't mean that we don't get answers. It means when we do, two more questions are brought up. By the end, we have a solid conclusion, but a few nagging thoughts are still left in our minds. Paradox is so obsessed with giving us answers, it never bothers to raise an questions to begin with.

I love the Cloverfield movies. Nothing like this series has ever been attempted before. I really do hope it keeps going. Despite the short comings of Paradox, there is still a lot of really cool stuff in there. Many studios shut down film series after one bad outing. I hope this isn't the case here. There are plans for future Cloverfield movies and I really hope they come to pass.


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Cloverfield Trilogy Quick Facts
Created by: J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves, and Drew Goddard
Starring: Michael Stahl-David, T.J. Miller, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw