Orbiting a planet on the brink of war, scientists test a device to solve an energy crisis, and end up face-to-face with a dark alternate reality. – (Source)

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 21% (Critics) / 58% (Audience)
MetaScore: 36 – Generally unfavorable reviews
Directed By: Julius Onah
Written By: Oren Uziel
Starring: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Daniel Brühl
Studio: Netflix

The Good:
The assembled cast for THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX is so good (I was especially excited to see Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Ripley mode) and I do give the folks behind this franchise credit for going in new directions with each installment as the original CLOVERFIELD was found footage horror and 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE was a very personal and claustrophobic psychological thriller for the most part while THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX went more for straight science fiction.

The Bad:
While the cast was good the movie did nothing with them (especially a severely under-utilized David Oyelowo in a completely thankless role) and switching up the genre of each subsequent film in the series may be a cute little gimmick but if the execution is so shoddy then what is the point? There seemed to be no cohesion in this movie and instead just a lot of what the people behind the scenes probably thought were cool ideas but very little focus.

There were moments where I thought the film was going to go down similar sci-fi/horror roads as EVENT HORIZON but then it would quickly fizzle away. Then it would look like maybe we were going to get some ALIEN style “monster on a space station” thrills and that would immediately be dashed in favor of more of the banal goings on that the movie ultimately ended up being all about.
And I could not muster up even a fraction of a damn about anything that was going on with the Mbatha-Raw character’s husband (played by Roger Davies) back on Earth.

The Ugly:
I am really gonna need someone to explain to me how traveling between dimensions gives a disembodied arm sentience because the movie failed to even come close to offering a worthwhile explanation.

Final Verdict: The third film in the CLOVERFIELD franchise fumbles what should have been an easy victory by wasting it’s talented cast and failing to be interesting in any way.

Grade: D