I was really excited to watch this right after the Super Bowl ended. But after about 45 minutes, I got so bored I was falling asleep, so I switched it off. I loved the first two Cloverfield movies, but this one felt more like Event Horizon than either of the two Cloverfields. (I hate Event Horizon, I made the mistake of watching that in the theater on opening night, so I actually had to sit through that schlock all the way through, instead of just being able to switch it off like I could with this movie).
Man, I wish I had seen Event Horizon in a theater. I bet that was awesome.
I liked Event Horizon. It wasn’t high art or anything, but I think it was a fine dose of sci-fi horror cheese. (I admit that I’m probably a bit biased since the whole “warp space = hell” thing really tickled my Warhammer 40k nerve.) Sam Neill chewed scenery appropriately, and the effects left just enough to the imagination to be scary.
This was not that at all. Once this movie hits the midpoint all the rules go out the window and it turned into a pointless hash of illogical bits.
I had mixed feelings about Life and I famously hate Event Horizon (despite the terrific premise). Trying to watch this now- despite it sounding like a pile of garbage that wastes a terrific cast - but I keep getting errors. Maybe that’s the true paradox.
It started! My life is about to change. One way or the other!
I think my glibness came across as enthusiasm. I should have punctuated it thusly: It was… okay.
I mean, I think you’re right – this movie didn’t do anything special, and if it weren’t for the novelty of it being announced and released on the same day and the tie to the Cloverfield franchise, it doesn’t really have anything going for it.
Nothing in it makes any sense, and I’m not quite willing to just chalk everything up to “multi-dimensional weirdness.” Why does the guy have worms in him? Why does the spaceship eat the guy’s arm? Is the spaceship sentient? Why did worm guy have the USB sphere inside of him? Why did the arm know where it was? Why was the blonde lady in the walls? What was the point of the storyline with the boyfriend on Earth? Just so he could yell at them to not come back at the end?
Was there any indication in Cloverfield 1 that they were on energy rations or on the verge of war? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but I thought the setting was normal everyday 2008. It’s a weird recontextualization/retcon if so.
Hated Event Horizon. I went in expecting a hard scifi movie, so that was perhaps my own damn fault, but still.
Haven’t watched Clover3 yet, does it explain where the monster came from?
Not exactly, but it’s about the incident that causes the monster’s arrival. The explanation of the incident basically includes some “anything is possible!” nonsense, and well, there we go, a monster on earth for some reason.
None. Cloverfield was clearly set in “our” world. By that I mean, of course there were things going on globally but there was nothing about it that radically set it apart from the world we know. Certainly nothing long the lines of rationing (of any sort) or the outbreak of a massive war.
31M in: this is not very good.
47m: Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension used to talk about something from bad movie lore called a “Stupid World”. That is, a world that if you were sent there you could conquer it in under 10 minutes because of how dumb everyone there is. This movie takes place in such a world.
Is it seriously not going to occur to anyone that maybe their problem is somehow dimensional and not one of “we travelled somewhere” or “we disintegrated the earth”. Debicki’s insistance that she was the Shepard engineer should have been the clue everyone needed to put two and two together. Instead, we have to wait until Bruhl is improbably and magically released and happens to stumble on O’Dowd’s arm for him to come up with a working theory. What makes all of this worse was the Donal Logue’s character rant about how the Shepard collider could rip open a hole in space time and let DEMONS IN AND THIS IS VERY BAD. I like how O’Dowd is trying to make a game of this though.
Second rant: After The Donal Logue was ranting about monsters I thought “I hope this doesn’t wind up being an attempt to explain Cloverfield”. And then we returned to the out of place boyfriend thread on earth and yep they’re probably going there. Sigh.
The thing is, much like Event Horizon there’s a great setup here. Execution is not good though.
Hey, a fellow Jabootu fan! My man! Bad link, though.
Bad link and spelling, heh. But fixed (thanks for pointing it out).
61m: I can’t even muster up any sympathy for Debicki’s character. Also, now we’re going to the “shit just starts going wrong” playbook and this is even more booring.
Like I said I haven’t watched it yet, so I’m not clicking on the spoiler text!
You’ve now made it past the point where I stopped. Let me know if the rest of the movie is worth pushing through for.
Gah! I forgot about the fact they thought they had destroyed Earth. I mean, in terms of likelihood, it should go 1) we moved, 2) we went to a different dimension (which, while improbable, should be on everyone’s mind because they watched the guy on the news ten seconds ago), and then waaay down at the bottom is 3) we destroyed the Earth and left no trace of it.
OK I know you guys are trying to talk people out of watching this but now I’m starting to feel like I’m missing out on some kind of community thing. I want to gripe too!!
Yes agreed. In terms of likelyhood, #3 in fact would be waaaaaaaay down at like #200000.
119m: Gugu Mbatha-Raw what the fuck are you even thinking that is, inarguably, one of the five worst ideas a person in a movie has ever had. OH MY GOD why are characters written this badly. Dude, your counterpart is a civilian. Of course she’s going to have different motivations than you are. Showing up on her doorstep is a terrible idea. What the actual fuck.
Why is the space station trying to eat Chris O’Dowd what is even happening here. The movie seems to be flitting between "dude, we’re in another world and WEIRD SHIT is going on and " “hello there fellow,
we’re in another world but this is an entirely surmountable issue” and it’s just jarring.
I don’t even know what they’re doing now. Who is even in charge of this mission? It occured to me that GMR tried to send Terrible Russian Guy back to his quarters early and it felt like an order. But at times I thought Oyewolo’s character was in charge. Why am I back on earth again? This suuuuuuuuuuucks.
Oh, and rant from earlier: Why is TRG so pissed off at Bruhl. Keeping a space station running is.
. . I don’t know, many orders of magnitude less complicated than using a particle accelerator to create a clean and cheap source of energy. Shoddy attempt at trying to show the crew was stir crazy/tired over all the failure.
There were a couple of moments where i thought “oh my god they’re going to do eldritch horror in space that’s so cool” but of course they didn’t.
This movie was kinda fun but I can’t disagree with most of the criticism out there. Really happy I watched it on Netflix instead of paying a boatload to see it in the theater!
124m: what is this I don’t even. How did Debicki even know about the gun? And why isn’t she reasoning that her station is now over in our world, which I would argue is the most likely outcome. Also, she’s doiing the “I neeeeeeeed Shepard to save my world” thing but why would anyone expect this to work at this point given the absolute disaster “success” has turned out to be?