Film review: New Cloverfield an uneven, strangely paced film

Sunday night during the 52nd Super Bowl, Netflix released the first trailer for the new and highly anticipated Cloverfield movie. Netflix also shocked everyone even more so by announcing the movie would be released on Netflix immediately after the game.

A movie has never been released this quickly after the initial trailer. However; there is probably a reason Netflix did this, they probably knew their movie wasn’t that good and they wanted to release it as soon as possible.

The Cloverfield franchise is one of the most unique franchises of all time with a long and complicated history. Highly acclaimed director, J. J. Abrams, creator of “Lost” and director of “Star Wars: Force Awakens,” filmed “Cloverfield” in 2007. “Cloverfield” is a found footage horror/sci-fi film that consists of a giant monster of an unknown origin attacking New York City.

Abrams had plans to make a sequel, but the film ultimately got scrapped. In 2015 he then discovered a film entitled “Cellar” that he thought was excellent, but for some reason wasn’t getting released.

Abram’s production company bought the rights to film, but also had the excellent idea to connect the film to 2007’s “Cloverfield,” ultimately changing the name of the movie to “10 Cloverfield Lane.”

Many fans were anxiously awaiting the third Cloverfield film to see how these films were connected. “Cloverfield: Paradox” was originally called “Godparticle” before it was edited to fit the other two Cloverfield films. The film awaited many delays, but eventually Paramount Pictures lost faith in the project and sold it to Netflix. With the numerous setbacks it is no wonder that “Cloverfield: Paradox” is as sloppy as it is.

Directed by Julius Onah, who is a fairly new director, “Paradox” also stars many talented, but overall unknown actors. “Paradox” is set in the near future where the earth is having an energy crisis. A group of scientists who come from all over the world have been sent into space to test a particle accelerator that could supply the earth with a limitless supply of energy.

On the other hand, conspiracy theorists on Earth believe this particle accelerator could rip a hole in space creating doorways from other dimensions across all space and time. These doorways could cause beasts and demons to pass from dimension to dimension.

The scientists shrug off these conspiracy theorists and continue testing for two years until they are finally successful and form a beam from the accelerator. However; after the beam from the accelerator is accessed the crew discovers that the earth has disappeared. Not only does this happen, but other strange events occur that have a correlation with other dimensions.

The overall premise of “Cloverfield: Paradox” is actually quite interesting, but the execution leaves for a very uneven, strangely paced film that even makes the story incoherent at times. The biggest problem with paradox is that you can tell the producers took a movie and tried to connect it to the Cloverfield universe. On its own, “Paradox” is a forgetful and cliche space thriller that would traditionally be a direct-to-DVD movie despite its name.

On the other hand, the visual effects and the atmosphere of the movie is great and the actors make good performances out of a lifeless and cheesy script. In a way this movie explains how the other Cloverfield movies are connected, but the explanation is kind of a cop out and doesn’t really explain a whole lot.

Overall, “Cloverfield: Paradox” is a run of the mill space thriller that was hastily made to connect to the Cloverfield universe. This decision made for a muddled, and dull movie that is mediocre at best.