"The Cloverfield Paradox" (2018)

I tend to see a very small amount of films that I rate as one star. Since I don’t watch and review films professionally, I tend to avoid the ones that look bad or get reviewed poorly. But, Netflix and J.J. Abrams proved themselves to be marketing geniuses yet again.

What do you do when you have a dud on your hands? How about announce it to the world mere moments before you release to onto Netflix. There had been rumors of yet another Cloverfield film for months, so people were aware of it already. But the surprise came when, during the Super Bowl, they announced that it would be available to view worldwide as soon as the game was over. I imagine millions of people watched it.

The thing about the Cloverfield movies is that they are all basically a gimmick. They take a screenplay that already exists and find a way to tie it into the vague, monster alien invasion idea.

In the case of “The Cloverfield Paradox” they started with a film about a science experiment that breaks down the barriers between dimensions, between the “multi-verse” concept of reality. And, as precarious as those sorts of stories tend to be, this one takes the wobbly premise and uses it as an excuse for “anything goes.”

Literally. There is nothing in this film that makes any logical or plot-driven sense. It is irrational from start to finish. It is an offense to fantastic fiction, because it presumes that fantasy must simply be weird with no thought given to world building or internal logic.

Boo.