The Cloverfield Paradox Review

Yeah that's right. I'm reviewing a new "Cloverfield" movie right now. Totally not something I thought I would be doing at this moment, but it happened. And for that, this movie is absolutely genius. Or at least the extremely unique marketing campaign is. If we add a bit of context to this, the "Cloverfield" franchise is one that has always been shrouded in secrecy. I didn't watch the original "Cloverfield" in theaters back in 2008, so I'm not perfectly up to par on exactly how that movie's marketing went about, but I'm pretty sure it's a movie that just showed up with a trailer a month or two before it actually came out with people wondering what the heck this movie is. A lot of people enjoyed it. A lot of people didn't. Call it an acquired taste, I suppose. I jumped on the bandwagon several years later. Let's call it 2012. Give or take a year or two because I don't know exactly when I saw it. But I bought it on DVD in a $5 bin from Wal-Mart one day and loved it. Then in January 2016, "10 Cloverfield Lane" starts trending on Facebook and I thought that meant a sequel was announced. And it was. But the announcement was that the sequel had already been made and here's the trailer for this sequel that's coming in two months. Say what? So I saw that one and loved it, too!

Fast forward to yesterday. Super Bowl LII. During the first half of the game, the trailer for the long-awaited third "Cloverfield" finally debuted. Some thought it would be called "God Particle." Turns out the trailer reveals that this movie is called "The Cloverfield Paradox." And the previous rumors that it had been sold to Netflix from Paramount turned out to be true. But that first trailer didn't inform us when the movie would come out. So I assumed April because that was the most recently scheduled release date. See, unlike the first two movies, we've known about this one for a while, but it kept bouncing around on the schedule quite a bit, making me quite antsy, especially when the release dates were approaching and we still had no trailer. So I was really happy to be satisfied with that trailer finally showing up during the Super Bowl. I was planning on giving my thoughts on the trailer along with the other trailers we got, but then we were surprised with a second trailer towards the end of the game, which ended with the statement that the movie was available to be streamed right now. SAY WHAT?!?! But yeah. It was true. I opened my Netflix app and there it was. So once the game ended, I went home and watched it with my roommates. Now I'm writing my review.

I'm still kinda blown away by this. Just two days ago I was a bit flustered that we still hadn't seen a trailer, so I wasn't even sure when this thing was coming out. And now I'm writing my review of it because within hours it was confirmed to be heading to Netflix, the trailer showed up and now the movie is here. That's such a "Cloverfield" thing to do with the marketing and I love it. So maybe it's a bad idea to write this review when I'm still hyped up over the fact that I just watched a new "Cloverfield" movie that I wasn't expecting for another two months, but the other part of me wants to surprise my friends who payed no attention to the Super Bowl with a review on Monday of a new "Cloverfield" movie that they may be unaware even exists. Obviously the latter won out. If I managed to shock even one of you, then mission accomplished. Now for the most recommended movie-watching experience, I recommend closing this review, opening up your Netflix and watching the movie. This is not a spoiler review, but I am going to give you my thoughts on this and in doing so I have to reveal some plot details. If you want to go in completely blind like I did, then turn away and read the rest later. Just make sure you find the biggest screen possible for the best experience.

Full disclosure here. I am predicting right now that if you aren't sold by this franchise as of yet, "The Cloverfield Paradox" is not the movie that's going to convert you. I can even understand you still not being sold by this specific movie even if you did like the previous two. But if you're a "Cloverfield" fan, you need to at least give this one a shot because I think what they've done with this franchise is rather fascinating. The first one is a found footage horror film. If you don't like the found footage style, then I can totally understand why you may hate "Cloverfield." It's not worth watching a movie that literally makes you sick. But I thought it was a clever way of telling an alien invasion horror flick. Some kids are at a party and a monster shows up and now they have to run away. That's our movie. Also don't watch if you don't like horrors. But if found footage and/or monster movie horror films aren't your thing, "10 Cloverfield Lane" might be worth checking out if you happen to like intense mystery thrillers. Most of that movie takes place in an underground bunker with this girl trapped by a crazy John Goodman. One of the best modern thrillers, in my opinion. If you hated the ending, well, I'll just kindly remind you what franchise this is and hopefully that will make sense.

Enter "The Cloverfield Paradox." This one is not found footage. Neither was "10 Cloverfield Lane" for that matter. So no need to worry about the movie giving you motion sickness. What this movie does do is successfully switch up the genre again, giving us three "Cloverfield" movies that are all different genres. We go from found footage horror to thriller to sci-fi. Yes, "The Cloverfield Paradox" is best described as a sci-fi movie. A sci-fi movie that is heavily sprinkled with the "Cloverfield" magic. And just like "10 Cloverfield Lane" was not really a sequel to "Cloverfield," "The Cloverfield Paradox" is also not really a sequel to either. They're all like sidequels. They're happening side by side in the same universe, but neither picks up on the exact same story arc as others. And if that doesn't make sense, maybe a better way to describe it is this whole franchise is a giant puzzle. Because J.J. Abrams, who is producer for all three, loves his mystery box films, him and his team have now given us three pieces to this "Cloverfield" puzzle. Each piece stands on its own as a decent film, but if you look at all three of them together, we're formulating this rather fascinating picture of this creative story that's enhanced by this unconventional reveal of this puzzle.

It's possible that some might finish this movie and consider it to be a tired premise that they're sick of seeing, especially if they watched it on a tiny screen instead of finding a bigger TV to watch it on. I'm kinda bummed that this never made it to theaters because seeing this on the big screen would've been awesome. But oh well. Netflix is changing the game with movies like this and "Bright," so I'm cool with it, I suppose. But I say this might be a tired premise for some because this is a lot like the movie "Alien." A crew is on a ship and crazy things start happening, with some sort of monster potentially involved. In addition to all the other "Alien" sequels, most of which aren't that good when compared to "Alien" and "Aliens," we also had the movie "Life" last year that half-heartedly did a similar thing. Throw in a touch of "Gravity," "Interstellar," "The Martian" and others and we have ourselves a movie in "The Cloverfield Paradox" that feels very similar to others. But it had a unique enough spin to it to have me completely fascinated the whole way through as it also borrows a lot of classic sci-fi ideas when it comes to interdimensional travel, multiverses, parallel universes and what not. And as the title suggests, there's a clash that happens that creates a certain paradox that this movie explores.

Movies like this are naturally divisive. "2001: A Space Odyssey" was a hated movie by many when it first came out 50 years ago and Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" impressively had every opinion imaginable, with myself winding up on the more negative side of the spectrum. At the moment, the IMDb score is quite high, but looking at the reviews submitted sees quite a range of opinions. No critic score on Rotten Tomatoes exists when I'm typing this as Rotten Tomatoes is barely aware this movies even exists, although there are audience opinions submitted that seem to be nicer to the movie than the user reviews on IMDb. So I don't know what the consensus for this movie will be, if there ever is one as I'm guessing there won't be, and as such I feel a little insecure with not knowing if I'm in the majority or the minority, but I was fascinated by this ride. I had the edge-of-your-seat sensation for the whole time and I had a giant smile on my face when it wrapped up. I think a major part of this is that I'm completely sold on this franchise and I thought this movie did a great job of expanding the lore of this universe while filling in some of the gaps that the previous two films left wide open. I had several "Ah ha!" moments that made me smile like a little school boy.

Just like with "Cloverfield" and "10 Cloverfield Lane," the ending of "The Cloverfield Paradox" left me wanting more. Luckily we might not have to wait for too much longer as news came out within the last week or two that the fourth film is already done filming and has the working title "Overlord." Or perhaps that's the secret title they've been using. Either way, a movie called "Overlord" from Paramount is currently on the schedule for October 26 of this year. But as we just learned from "The Cloverfield Paradox," the fourth movie will come to us whenever the heck J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot team decide to give it to us. Maybe that's tomorrow. Maybe that's October. Maybe that's in 2019. But apparently it'll be a World War II film, which is interesting. It feels like we're building to a certain point, like this is the Cloverfield Cinematic Universe and they have their version of "The Avengers" in the works, but these are all the individual solo films building up to that. "The Cloverfield Paradox" is a solid entry in this saga of "Cloverfield" films. It's hard to rank these movies because they're so different, but I still think "10 Cloverfield Lane" is my favorite. Yet "The Cloverfield Paradox" isn't too far behind. And if I'm the only one that thinks so, then so be it. My grade for it is a 9/10.