Started off solid even though it was an obvious ripoff of several better movies, but it just devolved from there. Not as bad as people are saying, but still a complete fucking mess. Just watch it as a Sci-Fi Space Opera and don't try to make any logical sense of the storyline and you'll be ok....................or at least you won't be too pissed.
You can't really think of it as a traditional franchise really...........it's more of an Anthology series created in a similar world. Closer to "Black Mirror", then to "Star Wars" or "Star Trek". Juries still out on this I guess. I liked the first, haven't seen the second (though it got decent reviews for the most part), and this one was a dud.
Let me put it this way. It's the last 30 minutes of the last Fantastic Four movie bad. It's a mess. For a movie portraying itself as a Sci-Fi thinker, it was pretty fucking stupid and illogical. It looked pretty and had a good cast, but they just tried to do too much. Obviously there were also lots of re-shoots to turn a film not meant to have the Cloverfield name attached to it, somehow grafted into that worlds mythology. The bones of a better film is there..............but this isn't it.