Clever marketing, terrible film.

So…umm…that came out of nowhere.

Although the Cloverfield franchise has made a big thing of working the covert marketing angle, I don’t think anyone quite expected this. Both Cloverfield and its spin-off, 10 Cloverfield Lane, positively revelled in the mystery of their viral marketing; however, the mystery with this next instalment was the fact there wasn’t any marketing. Clever, eh? Kind of.

Flexing their muscle once again, Netflix took to the Super Bowl, not only to drop the film’s trailer, but to drop the mic by streaming The Cloverfield Paradox the second the final whistle went (or whatever they do in American football). Although this bold tactic is admittedly pretty mind-blowing, it does rather gloss over what an absolute omnishambles the film is.

I’m sure many will be sharpening their knives as they proclaim this the final nail in cinema’s coffin; however, I don’t think we need to dust down those last rights just yet. In the cold light of day, and when the novelty-factor of it all wears off, what we’re left with is a glorified fly-tip of a film that everyone surely knew was destined to sink without a trace.

Orbiting a planet amidst an energy crisis and on the brink of all-out war, a group of researchers attempt to harness a new, potentially infinite, energy source aboard the Cloverfield Station. While the benefits of unlimited energy are obvious, the cost of tampering with the volatile Shepherd particle accelerator could see the crew come face-to-face with an alternate reality far darker and dangerous than their own.

The concept behind the Cloverfield franchise is an intriguing, if slightly puzzling, one. Fresh from the hyperactive, über-nerd brain of J. J. Abrams; Cloverfield took the low-budget monster film concept to new levels with a shaky, found-footage approach and a subsequent anthology twist that has inadvertently carved out a tidy little money spinning universe for itself.

On the face of it, this is a neat little tactic to prolong an IP without exhausting the traditional sequel route, yet the ad hoc nature of Cloverfield’s interconnectivity has already begun straining the entire concept.

In all honesty, did we really need to see how the Clover monster came into being? Weren’t we all better off letting its mystery be the franchise’s biggest selling point? Possibly. However, while there’s an innate intrigue in pulling back that curtain, the way The Cloverfield Paradox goes about doing so is nothing short of shambolic.

By promising the world and delivering next to nothing, The Cloverfield Paradox is all mouth and no trousers and a prime example of a fascinating setup let down by terrible execution. We’re presented an intriguing world of energy shortages, world wars, nature tampering, and parallel universes that tease high-concept sci-fi fun, yet, what we end up with is a dull, confused, and incoherent mess.

Things start brightly enough, with a truly terrifying and close to the bone setup of a desperate planet, bereft of energy and edging towards World War III. However, before we’re even given the chance to soak this all in, we’re beamed aboard the Cloverfield Station and forced to endure an hour and a half of tedious exposition, cringe-worthy dialogue, sub-Alien space horror, timey-wimey mumbo jumbo, and shockingly thought out science; before leaving with an overwhelming sense of what could have been.

The Cloverfield Paradox is a waste on almost every level, not least with its cast. Stacked with enviable levels of talent, the film’s script and plotting do nothing to help any of the ensemble; in fact, the shamefully bland script conspires to undercut even the most reliable among them. If your film boasts the likes of Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Daniel Brühl, and Elizabeth Debicki; you’d better make damn sure you offer them something substantial to work with, yet what they’re given is, quite frankly, pitiful.

In their defence, the cast aren’t helped by a script that leaves a lot to be desired. While the ham-fisted, exposition-heavy dialogue gives no one a chance of salvaging much respect from the wreckage, it’s the film’s weird tone and downright ridiculous plot that really sinks the ship. Chock-full of gaping plot holes, half-baked science, and surreal, style-over-substance scenes that add little to the narrative; The Cloverfield Paradox’s writing disappoints on all fronts.

Feeling every inch the troubled project it was, the film is an incoherent hodgepodge of ideas with little idea of what it truly wants to be. While its sights are set admirably high, The Cloverfield Paradox feels like several films bolted together to form one unsatisfying, bland whole. Though it clearly aspires to great things, the film finds neither the inspiration to match Alien’s blood-curdling space horror, nor the low-budget edge of its franchise predecessors; ultimately landing somewhere in no man’s land with a loud, dull thud.

Despite its reportedly inflated $45 million budget, The Cloverfield Project feels oddly low-rent and, even more bizarrely, comes off looking cheaper than both Cloverfield or 10 Cloverfield Lane - two films that appeared to pride themselves on their budgetary constraints. With a distinctly low rent feel and visual concepts that Black Mirror would pass on, the film’s limited location and dull aesthetics do nothing to create a satisfying cinematic experience; which is probably a good thing, considering the fact you now won’t have to shell out to see it at the cinema.

Though I’m sure it will be lauded as dawning of a new era, the truth of the matter is that, with Netflix dropping the movie like a particularly hot potato, the release of The Cloverfield Paradox just feels like the movie streaming equivalent of a hit and run.

Unoriginal and inconsistent, The Cloverfield Paradox feels like a million other (better) sci-fi horrors out there; adding nothing new to the genre, other than some advancement of a Cloverfield mythos that’s now starting to exhibit visible signs of strain. Conspiring to waste the talents of a top-notch cast; the film’s script feels choppy, inconsistent, and riddled with the kind of half-arsed science that gives sci-fi a bad rep. With the connections to the extended Cloverfield universe now feeling sloppily backdated and increasingly forced, something drastic will have to be done to stop this monster franchise from mutating out of all proportions.