This past weekend I finally got my new televisions set, a large 55″ 4K display with High Dynamic range. Naturally that meant I had to find some 4K content to watch on it the evening it was set up and ready. With a couple of friends over and after we had finished out board and card games for the evening we settled in for a movie.

Browsing through the selections on Netflix I suggested The Cloverfield Paradox, the next entry in the SF/Horror film anthology. I enjoyed Cloverfield, and 10 Cloverfield Lane, so I had decent hopes that this movie would not be a waste of time.

I was wrong.

Populated by decent actors who are entertaining to watch, The Cloverfield Paradox is ultimately a silly movie that more than strain disbelief it shatters its bones and grinds them into an abrasive power then flings that into your eyes.

The story set up is that in the near future Earth is running out of energy all our supplies are nearly exhausted. (That concept itself feels very 70s.) The only hope for humanity is an orbiting particle accelerator that if it works will supply limitless power to the entire plant. (Never mind such minor issue as a distribution grid and the like. All they need is for the thing to work.) The nations of the world are moving rapidly towards war of the lack of energy and time is running out for the station and her brave international crew.

Of course when the system is turned on there is the predicted catastrophe that had been ignored and now all manner of super strange stuff is going on. This is one of the SF movies where the writers feel that the phrase ‘Quantum Mechanics’ is an incantation that allows anything at all to happen, not matter how stupid or impossible.

Very quickly the crewmembers turn on one another and there are special effects driven deaths and injuries until this all leads to the principal character making their fateful decision and growing through their rather predictable arc.

Watching the film could have been more tedious had my friends and I not fallen into MST3K mode, but still this one is a miss. However, the space scenes and the visuals were beautiful so the TV works great!