So I finally sat down and watched The Cloverfield Paradox which I liked the most out of the Cloverfield movies so far. The movie starts out with some info dumping about how Earth is running out of power sources and so the world has sent a team to a space station to work with a massive particle accelerator to attempt to find a new power source. When the experiment works all hell breaks loose on the space station has they ended up breaking the fabric of reality. Though it is a science fiction movie I would classify it more as a body horror such as Alien or the Thing than just straight sci-fi.
I’ve never loved any of the Cloverfield movies and this ones no exception though I do like it better than the others. In Cloverfield, I felt like the characters were very annoying and I didn’t care what happen. It doesn’t help that I have never been a fan of found footage movies either. 10 Cloverfield Lane on the other hand was a movie that I like the concept of but found the movie as a whole very boring. So, I didn’t have high expectations for Cloverfield Paradox. Though I don’t think Paradox was needed as part of the Cloverfield series I did like the concept of the movie and I wasn’t bored. If any of the Cloverfield movie got direct squeals I would want it to be Paradox as I feel like it has the most that could be done with it given how the story and ending is set up. It is the only Cloverfield movie that has any real horror in my opinion.
As the movie progresses it starts to feel like they characters are trapped in space where no one can help them which preys on the fear of the dark and unknown. The one thing that I’ve always disliked about theses movies is that most of the characters are just unlikable with few redeeming factors. For instance in Paradox, Ava’s arc does work as she wants to stay in an alternate world where her children are still alive but she doesn’t think what thorough the consequences of if she stays and there is a version of her in the world. And then there’s Jensen who was on the other ship and who’s reality is in jeopardy who comes off as a bitch who just wants everyone dead so, I was very happy that she ends up dying.
Paradox also is the movie where the explanation for how the alien invasions happened in the other movies is supposed to exist. This is never really explained, just that in accidentally ending up in an alternate reality and then jumping back to their own unleashed horrible monsters. I do feel like Paradox has the best ending out of all the Cloverfield movies just because its slightly more hopeful than the other two but the ending of these movies are never very good.
Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant is a novella about a research vessel going to the Mariana Trench to find Mermaids. Commissioned by the Imagine Network (which feels to me like if you combined the Discovery Channel fake documentaries with Asylum the creators of Sharknado), the scientist think that the company sponsoring the trip is just going to film a mockumentary but they end up finding real mermaids who are not kind or beautiful. This book is technically a prequel to Into the Drowning Deep but it works as a stand alone. However, if you want to have no information about what the mermaids are like and the twist at the end of In to the Drowning Deep read the full length novel first. I didn’t know about the novella when I first read the novel so they work in either order. I didn’t connect to the characters as much due to how short the book is but what is there is great. It made me want more from this world and story.
Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant is a science fiction horror novel about a research ship going out to the Mariana Trench to find mermaids and what happened to the ship, the Atargatis, that went out seven years previously. This is a reread for me and I loved it just as much as the first time I read it. The characters are amazing and complex from the woman who convinced Image that mermaids existed, the sister of one of the missing from the previous expedition, two big game hunters and many others. The wonderful thing about McGuire’s stories is she adds diverse characters in a way that is natural, they are diverse because our world is, this includes deaf sisters and a journalist who is both a lesbian and autistic.
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