The Cloverfield film series is notorious for releasing little information about these movies in the months leading up to their release, but this past Sunday after the Super Bowl, the series pulled off something even weirder. Originally supposed to be theatrically released, Paramount sold The Cloverfield Paradox (previously known as God Particle) to Netflix for reportedly $50 million, and the streaming service decided to release the movie immediately after the biggest football game of the year ended. It was a bold move, but as a result, it means there are also plenty of reviews for The Cloverfield Paradox floating around the web, and overall, this movie is nowhere near the hit its predecessors were.
Starting off, we have CinemaBlend's own Mike Reyes, who was kinder to The Cloverfield Paradox than most, awarding it four out of five stars and commended it for telling a "tense sci-fi story that truly puts it cast through the paces."
The Cloverfield Paradox uses its duration efficiently, mixing thrills and heart into a cocktail that makes for an effectively surprising film.
However, this only one of a few positive reviews for The Cloverfield Paradox, with the majority being negative. Over at Entertainment Weekly, Darren Finch gave the movie a C-, saying that the movie succeeded are as a marketing ploy than as an actual story.
Ten years and three films deep, the loose trilogy is a case study in marketing, a portrait of how the noise around a franchise starts to matter more than the movies that form the franchise.
Joanna Robinson from Vanity Fair declared that even with its talented cast, The Cloverfield Paradox failed to build the one thing a movie like this needs: "believable and sympathetic human characters."
The truth is, despite the prestige and a talented cast including David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Elizabeth Debicki, Daniel Bruhl, Chris O'Dowd, and Zhang Ziyi, The Cloverfield Paradox gives off the tired vibe of a TV episode you've already seen.
One of the other positive reviews for The Cloverfield Paradox came from Nerdist's Rosie Knight, who stated that the movie works as a "singular entity" hinting at a larger world while also telling a classic story calling back to the likes of Alien and Event Horizon.
At its best The Cloverfield Paradox is a fantastically tense locked room mystery in space, playing off complex concepts like quantum entanglement theory. In its weaker moments, it's a solid sci-fi that leans heavily into the giants who've walked before it.
Going to back to those who were less than pleased with The Cloverfield Paradox, The Los Angeles Times' Justin Chang noted that it was for the best that Paramount passed off the movie to Netflix rather than risk an "indifferent box office fate."
What excitement this movie is able to muster soon gives way to the startling realization that virtually none of its twists, for all their dimension-hopping audacity, have been coherently or intelligently thought through.
Finally, John DeFore from The Hollywood Reporter called The Cloverfield Paradox's drama "underwhelming" and guessed that screening this movie in theaters would have been "disastrous."
A trainwreck of a sci-fi flick bent on extending a franchise that should have died a peaceful death almost exactly one decade ago.
You can judge The Cloverfield Paradox for yourself by streaming it on Netflix. The Cloverfield series is expected to continue later this year with the currently-titled Overlord, which will be released theatrically on October 26. To learn what other movies are coming out this year, look through our 2018 release schedule.
