A lot of things have come to define the Cloverfield
franchise: Ingeniously vague marketing, a tenuous connection to each other and
including individual films that stand out so strongly on their own that it’s
enough to make said tenuous connections feel like a total non-issue. It’s a
loose-knit anthology series that, even with only two prior entries under its
belt, has helped cemented producer J.J. Abrams as a cinematic figurehead. And
then this film happened. Well, that winning streak had to break eventually.