The Cloverfield Paradox is the Netflix surprise Super Bowl announcement overnight release which, honestly, is a better story than the movie itself. It was previously called Cloverfield: The God Particle and was going to be a theatrical release but I suspect someone at the studio watched it and called Netflix. It’s not a terrible movie but it’s certainly not a A list modern theatrical movie – it’s production value, writing, and directing just aren’t up to snuff. The only reason it will make a dent in pop culture is the ad stunt.
The film is the third in the vaguely connected Cloverfield anthology monster/sci-fi movie series. The first two movies (Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane) really aren’t logically connected (not without twisting yourself sideways) and neither is this one. That said, this one seems to exists to justify the Cloverfield name as an ongoing anthology series. There’s mumbo jumbo about the experiment in the film altering reality, creating monsters and demons, in both this universe and parallel ones. Bam… now they can just continue to do whatever they want and hand wave this movie’s story as an excuse. Not a necessary excuse though… seems arbitrary. We’d have been fine without it.
Anyhow, this film is set in a parallel Earth where energy is running out and no giant monsters or aliens have (as far as we can tell) invaded. A space station has been built to run a particle collider experiment that would provide limitless free energy. And with any particle accelerator in a B movie, things go wrong. The space station is thrown into yet another alternate reality and then ever stranger, more nonsensical, and more completely random things happen. Abandon all hope of logic… just hand wave away all the weird stuff… or don’t and hate the flick.
I think the only people who will get anything out of this film are sci-fi fans who are already bought in and who also don’t get uptight over unscientific nonsense. The film is fine in a slightly-better-than-average SyFy Channel movie way. It will probably do well for Netflix due to its stunt marketing but I doubt most people will appreciate it. I barely do and I like this kind of stuff.
Score: 70