We wouldn’t usually comment on the Super Bowl, but one intriguing trailer to be shown was for the new Cloverfield universe-based movie, The Cloverfield Paradox. Even more interesting was that it would be available to stream via Netflix straight after the game.

Previously known as The God Particle, but brought into the expanding Cloverfield universe as a prequel and an explanation as to how the rampaging monsters appeared, we are presented with a somewhat familiar premise to start us off. In the near future, the Earth’s fossil fuels are due to run out completely within five years, but there is the potential for a particle accelerator nicknamed the Cloverfield Paradox to unlock a source of limitless energy and save the world from tearing itself apart via war.

Set up in space so as not to threaten the planet should something go wrong, the accelerator is booted up by the skeleton crew find that they’ve been unceremoniously dumped somewhere else and reality starts to get a bit weird when they discover someone aboard who claims to have been there the whole time. It turns out that they haven’t just jumped to the other side of the galaxy, but into a parallel dimension, where a similar mission failed disastrously.

Now the crew need to try and find a way to get the Paradox working again so that they can get home and save their dimension from the infighting that is threatening to break out, not knowing what they have unwittingly unleashed in the process.

Part Event Horizon, part Sunshine, even for the secretive Bad Robot team, this release has come completely out of the blue and shows that Netflix’s business model is not to be sniffed at. There is a decent budget being put to very good use here and although there is enough tension at play to bend a steel girder, there is also some wit, especially with Chris O’Dowd’s character on hand (only one, mind) to provide some light relief.

Of course, there are moments where you can see the cracks where a completely unrelated film has been shoehorned into the Cloverfield universe, but they’re not as jarring as you might think.

If this is the future of filmmaking for one of the genres we all enjoy so much, there’s hope yet away from the multiplexes – Christopher Nolan can now eat his hat.

Well worth a watch.

THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: JULIUS ONAH / SCREENPLAY: OREN UZIEL / STARRING: GUGU MBATHA-RAW, DANIEL BRUHL, CHRIS O’DOWD / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW