Never mind what the Twitterverse was saying about Justin Timberlake; Letterboxd was having one of our busiest nights ever on Superbowl night.
The surprise trailer for—and subsequent post-’bowl release of—Milo.
We knew it was gonna be huge when you started asking us—while the ball was still on the field—whether The Cloverfield Paradox had a Letterboxd entry yet. We jumped on The Movie Database and updated the existing entry (its previously rumored titles were Cloverfield Station and, before that, God Particle) and we were good to go.
24 hours later we pulled the numbers. The spike in the graph below shows the rush of activity of those completing the film (it debuted after the game, so if you watched it through, you were finishing right around 9pm Pacific). The blue line represents the number of Letterboxd s who marked the film as watched. Green represents those who logged a diary entry, and orange is the number of reviews written.
The line segments on the graph are ten minutes apart, so that peak around 9pm represents a rate of 1,800 actions per hour. Within five hours of that first spike, we’d amassed over 1,600 member reviews of the film.
To put this in perspective: in the same period, IMDb added just 44 reviews. In the 24 hours following that 9pm spike, Letterboxd had published 3,572 reviews (comprising 305,705 words)—IMDb added 108 reviews over the same period. (We are aware this comparison isn’t entirely fair, as IMDb has a minimum word count and moderates all submitted reviews, but it makes us proud to be attracting such a high volume of activity when the big releases happen.)
To make sure we’re doing good math, we decided to pick a comparison film. We looked up the stats for another recent big opening: Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Letterboxd filed 2,455 reviews for TLJ in the 24-hour period following its US release (December 13).
So: The Cloverfield Paradox had 3,572 reviews in the first 24 hours versus Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s 2,455. (Yes alright, you didn’t have to leave your laptops, buy a ticket and get to the cinema. But, c’mon—Star Wars.)
At the time of publication we have over 4,200 reviews for the film. IMDb has more ratings than us—16,257 versus 11,091—but our audience is a little more discerning: you’ve awarded it an average of 2.54 versus IMDb’s 6.0 out of 10 (3.0 equivalent on a five-star scale).
“This roller coaster of WTF moments that you can’t turn away from. Truly gripping sci-fi at its best. Probably many weird plot holes to be found, but it was completely escapist and captivating and left me engaged enough to ignore/overlook those shortcomings. Great flick.”
“…makes a solid case for why [Gugu Mbatha-Raw] should become more of a big name as she pretty much carries this movie, which [otherwise leaves] too much ambiguity and never answers enough questions for a film that was supposed to tie the Cloverfield universe together.”
“The sudden appearance of 10 Cloverfield Lane two years ago was a very welcome surprise, but this film, in its current state, for all intents and purposes, should not have been allowed out to the public… Cloverfield is one of my favorite found-footage films, with its sequel being a strong follow-up ed by a knockout terrifying performance by John Goodman. But The Cloverfield Paradox has almost nothing going for it, save the unorthodox release method.”
Colin thought the Cloverfield tie-in was a problem:
“The cast is great and the concept is brilliant. I’m sure God Particle would have been a great movie by itself, but by making it into a Cloverfield movie ruins the fun of what it could have been… I didn’t hate the movie but I hated that it was tied down by the Cloverfield brand.”
Ari, a first-time Cloverfield viewer, also loved it:
“Black girl magic / black excellence / black love on screen and behind the camera… This is so my brand of science fiction. Give me all the parallel universes, pocket dimensions, and alternate realities. It’s making me want to rewatch Fringe.”
And Caitlin speaks for many of us about the sheer spectacle of the thing:
“The Cloverfield Paradox came into my house, slapped me across the face, and made me cry about Higgs Boson and Daniel Brühl.”
Well played, Netflix. This was as eventful as a movie event gets.
