Review of The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) by Moviemitch96 — 05 Feb 2018

Netflix decided to surprise us all by releasing this right after the Superbowl, which was preceded by a brief 30-sec preview during the commercials. This made me especially eager, given what a huge fan I am of the Cloverfield films and their ever-so secretive marketing, as well as the numerous delays and release date changes this third installment has suffered.

Well, all that and the fact that this went to Netflix rather than be distributed to theaters via Paramount like the previous two films were should've been some red flags for me from the get go, cause while this managed to be entertaining and intriguing often times, it was a bit of a disappointment on all other fronts, especially in relation to it's connection to the Cloverfield anthology.

While it did partially succeed in somewhat cleverly bridging a few gaps between the other films here and there, the rest of it felt like simply a jumbled and confusing mess. The talented cast (consisting of Daniel Bruhl, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Elizabeth Debicki, and Chris O'Dowd to name a few) made do with what they were given to work with, cause to be fair to them, they did this film before it was reworked into a Cloverfield film, much like how the previous film 10 Cloverfield Lane was made.

And not to spoil too much, but also much like 10 Cloverfield Lane, really the only connection to Cloverfield that this film had didn't really occur until the very end, and even that ended up being rather ridiculous and quite literally last-minute.

Overall, it's simply fine when looked at as a sci-fi adventure film, but those looking for deeper and further connections into Cloverfield kinda like I was would really be getting their hopes up. Definitely the weakest link yet in this so-called connected anthology of Cloverfield films yet.