10 Weird Movie Plot Twists That Just Don't Work
2. Take Your Pick, Really! - The Cloverfield Paradox
The Set-Up: an experiment on an orbiting space station accidentally transports the station and its crew to a parallel universe.
The Twist: where to begin... as if the space station hopping universes wasn't enough, the accident also leads to a slew of random reality-warping events on board, as well as unleashing hell back on Earth in the form of attacks from giant monsters.
Why It Doesn't Work: The Cloverfield Paradox's excess twists are the perfect example of filmmakers over-egging the pudding. Perhaps in its initial form as The God Particle it might have been okay, but producer JJ Abrams' insistence on retrofitting it to the Cloverfield movies - and worse yet, attempting to form a coherent link across the very loosely related films - backfires horribly.
There's just way too much going on that distracts from what might have been a gripping enough central narrative, and when the final seconds cement the link to the original 2008 Cloverfield via the sudden emergence of a gargantuan 'Clovie,' it's just too ridiculous for words.
Still, at least now the aliens from the end of 10 Cloverfield Lane don't seem quite so silly by comparison.