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Adrienne Tyler is a movies & TV features writer, with a focus on horror. She has written for Netflix, FanSided, & more. She was a regular guest on the Netfreaks podcast and was a YouTuber at some point. Guillermo del Toro said “hi” to her once.
The sci-fi genre is home to some of the most popular and successful franchises, and 18 years ago, one of its most underrated ones began. There are some big franchises among the best sci-fi movies of all time, of which some also rank among the best movies ever, but with so many titles and stories in this genre, some great ones can get lost.
The sci-fi genre is vast, and it provides a lot of room for creativity, different styles, and mixes of genres. This ensures that there’s something for everyone, but it also leads to great movies becoming underrated and even forgettable despite their good quality. Such is the case of the Cloverfield franchise, which began almost two decades ago.
Cloverfield Is Still One Of The Most Underrated Sci-Fi Horror Franchises
In 2008, the sci-fi genre was taken by surprise by Cloverfield, a found footage monster horror movie written by Drew Goddard and directed by Matt Reeves. Cloverfield is told through the footage from a personal camcorder, following a group of friends at a party in New York City.
Their night takes a turn when a massive earthquake hits the city, followed by an explosion and later the appearance of an enormous creature. The group does what they can to survive, and if a giant monster wasn’t enough, there are also parasites they have to avoid while hiding from chaos and destruction.
Cloverfield was a huge box office hit, spawning a franchise and two sequels. First was 10 Cloverfield Lane, in 2016, directed by Dan Trachtenberg. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a standalone sequel, following a woman who, after a car crash, wakes up in an underground bunker with two other men who insist that Earth is now uninhabitable due to a catastrophic event.
10 Cloverfield Lane was a critical and commercial success, and it’s widely regarded as the best movie in the franchise. Two years later, The Cloverfield Paradox was released on Netflix, and it followed a group of astronauts testing a particle accelerator to solve Earth's energy crisis, but the experiment went horribly wrong.
Despite The Cloverfield Paradox not matching the success and quality of its predecessors, the Cloverfield franchise has become one of sci-fi’s most underrated. The world of Cloverfield is quite creative (despite its obvious influences), with an engaging anthology format, intriguing mythology, and a perfect mix of sci-fi, horror, and drama.
Why Cloverfield Still Needs Another Sequel After The Cloverfield Paradox
Although each Cloverfield movie has been its own story while set in the same universe, the movie series feels incomplete. As mentioned above, the movies, especially The Cloverfield Paradox, have left many questions that the franchise must answer for a better understanding of this unique world.
Despite its flaws, The Cloverfield Paradox was an intriguing entry in the franchise, different from the previous movies, and expanded this world, but it only left the audience wanting more. The Cloverfield franchise still has a lot to cover and explore, and it can get widely creative – just look at how it has covered found footage, psychological thriller, and space horror in three movies.
The Cloverfield franchise could benefit from making a proper sequel to either of its previous movies, through which it can address all those loose ends and answer its biggest mysteries. At the time of writing, the future of the Cloverfield franchise is unclear, with teases about a third movie and the traditional secrecy around it that prevents those involved from revealing more.
Spin-offs (Movies) 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Cloverfield Paradox
English (US) ·