An open letter to Netflix after 'The Cloverfield Paradox'

Dear Netflix,

Hi, it’s me again. I hope you got the letter about “Bright” I sent last month, but after watching “The Cloverfield Paradox,” I’m not quite sure you did. Let me summarize: “Bright” was supposed to be the cornerstone of a new blockbuster franchise, but all it did was take a promising premise and churn out a bland-looking, poorly-written, heavy-handed, overall unenjoyable piece of content that will quickly get lost in the vast ocean of mediocre “Netflix Originals.” Considering you aren’t really making money, I can’t imagine that the critical response for “Bright” (which some estimate had a $90 million budget) encouraged many new subscriptions. Of course, everybody’s pretty much got a Netflix subscription already — or at least a buddy with one who’ll let them bum his password. How are you planning to stay in business when you hit the subscriber ceiling?

When I saw the Super Bowl ad for “The Cloverfield Paradox,” I had hope, and not just because I spent my evening watching two teams I don’t care about play a sport I’m indifferent to, all the while aching to watch a movie instead. Surprise drops, made popular by the likes of Beyoncé and Frank Ocean – artists who know they’ve got a quality product that they can’t wait for the world to see — signal that the creators have faith in the movie they’re releasing. The original “Cloverfield” also had a successful and mysterious ad campaign back in 2007, and the trailers didn’t even include the movie’s title! “Cloverfield” put a “Blair Witch”-esque spin on the monster genre, and for the most part (except for those poor people with motion sickness) audiences enjoyed it. It was raw and scary, and the sequel — excuse me, “blood relative” — “10 Cloverfield Lane” sidelined the monsters and found-footage look for a more psychological horror story. Unfortunately, since “10 Cloverfield Lane” came from a script that didn’t originally have any connection to the “Cloverfield” franchise, it felt cobbled together: It was one movie being pulled in two opposite directions. For “The Cloverfield Paradox,” it looked like director Julius Onah was sticking with the third-person perspective, and setting the story in space! Hey! This showed a lot of promise! Just like “Bright” did. Oh no.

Now, I don’t need to remind you that maybe it would have been smart to secure the rights to “Cloverfield” and “10 Cloverfield Lane” so that curious viewers don’t go to your competitors, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, first. And I don’t need to tell you that Onah, whose only previous directing credit was a thesis project crime-thriller met with lukewarm reception, might not be the best choice for director of a sci-fi horror film. But with a cast that includes David Oyelowo, Chris O’Dowd, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Daniel Brühl, I certainly wouldn’t count this movie out from the jump.

After sitting through the mess that is “The Cloverfield Paradox,” it’s clear nobody at your company actually watched it, so allow me to recap: A worldwide fuel crisis in the near future has brought scientists from all — er, seven — nations together, and astrophysicists from America (Oyelowo), England (Mbatha-Raw), Germany (Brühl), China (Zhang Ziyi), Russia (Aksel Hennie), Brazil (John Ortiz) and ... Ireland (O’Dowd) are launched into space aboard a station satellite equipped with a particle collider. The crew hopes to successfully use the collider to generate enough energy to undo the crisis. Don’t understand particle collision? Neither do the screenwriters. Fortunately, big glowing displays aboard the space station flash red and beep to let the crew know when something goes wrong. After about two years of failed collisions, the crew finally gets a successful run, and it accidentally transports them to another dimension! Oops! Now the crew must try to find their way back to their dimension, while mysterious occurrences aboard the station have deadly consequences. If you remember the movie “Life” released last year, yes, it’s suspiciously similar. How does the giant monster from “Cloverfield” factor into it? Uh, you tell me. It’s your movie.

For a crew of astronauts, they seem incredibly ill-equipped for the repercussions of this experiment. Aren’t the nerds at NASA the only ones who might have a backup plan for interdimensional portals? Why, after two years of doing the same experiment, does Ortiz suddenly have second thoughts when some conspiracy theorist on cable news says the particle collider could bring monsters and aliens to our dimension? Why is he watching cable news on the space station right before they launch the collider, anyway? In fact, why does most of the stuff in this movie happen? Not to get too Neil DeGrasse Tyson here, but we’ve tested particle colliders successfully, like the Large Hadron Collider, and no wormholes have opened up because of it. Then again, why, in the middle of an energy crisis, can the space station afford to consume the energy necessary for two years worth of failed tests with nothing to show for it? Why are people on a space station walking around with normal gravity? Why does the crew have a 3-D printer for making bagels when there’s no way that’s more convenient than just having bagels onboard? I’m sorry, Netflix, I usually try not to nitpick movies, but you’re making it too easy for me.

Well, the science is junk. How are the characters? You’d think having seven people trapped aboard a space station might lead to some interesting and diverse characters, but unfortunately each crew member is paper-thin, adopting their nationality as an archetype: The Russian guy is a jerk, the German guy is shifty, the Chinese girl can only speak Mandarin (but everyone can understand her? And she can understand English too?), the Irish guy is the comic relief, the American guy is the leader of the crew and congrats, Brazilian medic, you’ve got completely no character. All this leaves is Mbatha-Raw, playing the only human being in this movie, Ava Hamilton. It isn’t quite clear what Ava’s purpose aboard the station is, but that’s okay, because she has a tragic backstory involving her dead kids that gets the audience to root for her. Maybe if the movie didn’t drop viewers into the action two years after experiments started, we could get a feel for the escalating tension aboard the station. Unfortunately, the collider that discovered interdimensional travel couldn’t give this crew any dimensionality.

As a subscriber, Netflix, I’m begging you to stop releasing this garbage. My dad’s not paying however many bucks per month just so that you can keep pumping out obtuse stand-up specials, ’90s sitcom reboots and Adam Sandler comedies. Give the people what they want, meaning more “Chef’s Table,” another season of “Bojack Horseman” and all the gritty crime documentaries you can handle. Leave the space-travel monster schlock for the Syfy channel. And before you plan to spring another movie on us with no warning, make sure it’s something people will actually enjoy watching.