One thing I was surprised about during the Super Bowl was that Netflix did buy The Cloverfield Paradox and it was already streaming. I liked the original Cloverfield and thought 10 Cloverfield Lane was even stronger despite the shift in tone and story.. so was interested to see this one.
The premise is earth in shambles and the only thing that can save it is a new energy producing collider being tested in Orbit aboard a space station. They finally have a successful test only to see the fabric of space and time ripped apart in the process.
First thing about this installment is what type of movie is it? Early on it teases it's going to be body horror.. but then it backs off. It dips it's toes into Sci-Fi but also backs off. There's some disaster movie stuff in there but not a lot.. It then sorta turns into a thriller but never really commits to that either. It's basically a hodge podge of several different genres without ever really feeling like it actually knows what it is.
This isn't to say it's all bad. The cast is good.. I always enjoy Chris O'dowd.. and it's paced well. While they borrow from other works in the various genres it never feels like a complete retread of any one thing.. more like a greatest hits of various different movies. It ends up being watchable but never really adds too much of it's own to any of the things it tries to be.
After seeing it i'm not surprised they sold it to Netflix. It doesn't look or feel like a theatrical movie.. it feels like a well produced straight to DVD or something the SCI-FI channel would do (that's not schlock). I was shocked to see the budget was set at $5m (which seems right) but ballooned to $40m.. where did that money go?
Bottom line.. if you have Netflix and like the Cloverfield 'universe' then its worth a shot. It's nowhere near the surprise that Cloverfield Lane was but for cheap SCI-FI its good enough. It also weaves in and out of the Cloverfield mythos set by the previous films which is somewhat interesting.
