Bird Box (2018)
Directed by Susanne Bier
Viewed on Netflix
Summary: Sandra Bullock sleepwalks through this dull, monotonous, disappointing horror movie that has somehow taken the internet by storm.
If you’ve been on the internet in the past two weeks, then I probably don’t need to introduce Bird Box, what with the memes and viral ‘Bird Box Challenge’ that Netflix is begging people not to do. Oh, also that fact that more than 45 million Netflix accounts have seen the movie. So if you’re reading this and have a Netflix subscription, or have the password to someone’s account, then there’s a good chance you’ve probably already seen it. Before I get into my thoughts on the movie itself, I have to admit my sole reason for watching the movie was to check out what made so many people interested in it.
After viewing Bird Box, I had only one thought, and that was, “Why on Earth were so many people interested in that?” Usually I save this for the end, but my god, I did not like Bird Box. In fact, I think I hated it. Okay, okay, I’ll have a little more decorum than that and explain to anyone who may not be familiar with it what the plot of Bird Box is. Bird Box follows a woman, Malorie (Sandra Bullock), and her journey across a post-apocalyptic landscape, along with two children, Boy and Girl, as they journey towards a supposed safe compound in a desolate land. During this, we see flashbacks to five years prior, where a heavily pregnant Malorie attempts to navigate the newly happening apocalypse.
If you don’t know, this apocalypse was caused by some sort of monster/ghost/spirit/demon/shit that is never even attempted to be explained which causes people to instantly commit suicide if you see it. Also it’s invisible, because they couldn’t be bothered to come up with any kind of monster design. Some of you are probably thinking, wait a second, an unseen force that kills people by making them instantly commit suicide in gory (and sometimes amusing) ways, haven’t I heard that premise before? Yes, you have. That is the premise to The Happening, a movie from 2008 about an apocalypse caused by trees releasing chemicals into the air that make people kill themselves. Why a movie, or the book it was based on, would want to take the same concept as one of the most poorly received movies of the 2000s is anyone’s guess.
This is a huge problem, especially because I have seen The Happening a few times, it’s one of my favorite bad movies and it is all I could think about for most of Bird Box. Sure, Bird Box is a better movie, it would hard to be worse than The Happening, but every time something was supposed to be scary or tragic or upsetting, all I could feel was joy as I remembered Mark Wahlberg denying that he was eyeing an old woman’s lemon drink. That’s a problem for any movie, but it goes double for a horror film that dabbles in gruesome imagery. There are tons of scenes of people killing themselves here, and some of the ways people do that are upsetting and disturbing, but I just couldn’t take that seriously at all. I’ll explain that a little bit more with one specific scene, where a character commits suicide by smoothly stepping backward into the path of an oncoming bus. The idea of someone killing themself by running into traffic is sad and upsetting, but seeing someone take one quick hop back and get struck, in a shooting style very similar to that of a comedy shot, struck me more as absurd dark comedy than anything I was supposed to be upset by.
These deaths may have been more meaningful had any of the characters had meaningful personalities, dialogue or interactions. By and large, everyone we meet is just an incredibly generic post-apocalyptic personality who we’ve seen over and over again thanks to the deluge of zombie movies. There’s the cynical asshole, the soft-hearted idiot who gets killed instantly, the hopeful and practical love interest for our lead who tragically sacrifices themselves for her (woops spoilers!), etc., and that makes everyone impossible to care about. There was a brief glimmer of hope for Malorie at the beginning, as she’s presented to us as an artist struggling with pregnancy and uncertainty as to whether or not she wants to be a mother. Definitely a unique premise for a character in a post-apocalyptic setting, and I was excited to see where this was going, but I had a sneaking fear that the end point of the character would just be her accepting that motherhood was great. It is. I was so disappointed. Why introduce these elements if you’re just going to go the safest and most family-friendly route? Why further stigmatize women who might not want to be mothers or are unsure about it by introducing yet another character whose journey is just her learning that societal expectations of her are completely correct?
Speaking of being disappointed by lazy writing, I need to get back to the monsters and their non-presence in the movie. The reason the title of the film is ‘Bird Box’ is because birds are able to sense these spectres, which I don’t really have a problem with, and as such, Malorie brings a box of birds with her so that she can sense the phantoms while everyone is blindfolded. Now, you might ask, why does having the birds matter if phantoms can’t hurt you unless you look at them? Aren’t you safe if you’re blindfolded? Or just blind? The answer, of course, is, “It’s the title of the movie, so shut up.” Really, the reason the birds are there is so that the audience can be told when the spectres are around so you know when to be scared. How exciting. There’s some mention that the monsters appear as different thing to different people or they whisper things to you, but that actually scary concept is not explored. We can’t concentrate on the horror, because we need way more time for Bird Box to be ultra schmaltzy.
For how scary and disturbing Bird Box occasionally wants to be, it seem to wallow in cheesy feel good-ness whenever it can. Aside from the ending, which is so upbeat and happy and the best resolution that all of the characters could get, there are a bunch of moments where something dire happens but then everything turns out fine, as if nothing had ever happened, or the characters are at their lowest point but then we just transition away from that and everything is okay in the next scene. A perfect example is late in the movie, Malorie and the two kids are rafting down a river and are approaching a section of rapids. Earlier, Malorie said that someone had to look to steer her in the proper direction so they won’t all die, but at the last second she decides that isn’t necessary and steers blindly, instantly crashing. But there are no consequences for this! The kids are fine, Malorie is fine, hell, even the birds are fine! It really devalues the tension, even if I get what they were going for. They probably thought the rest of the movie was so intense that we needed the moments to be hopeful and feel good, but I didn’t think the rest of the movie was intense. With that being the case, those scenes just feel silly and weird.
One last thing that disappointed me a bit was how reliant Bird Box was on the flashbacks to when the apocalypse was just starting out. I was looking forward to seeing A Quiet Place-esque explanations of how people have adapted to this strange new world, but we didn’t get a lot of scenes like that. Most of the movie was just people hanging out in a house with the blinds drawn and being dicks to each other. Which, I admit, is probably how most apocalypses begin, but it doesn’t make for a particularly thrilling set-piece, especially as the characters are all fairly one note. And, if I’m being perfectly honest, an apocalypse that can be mostly avoided by drawing the blinds and avoiding going outside (how I live everyday) doesn’t really scare me that much.
At the end of the day, I just don’t get it. I don’t get why this is such a popular movie. I don’t get why the ‘Bird Box Challenge’ is a thing. I don’t get how they got a bonafide movie star to be the lead of this thinly-written pseudo-horror lecture on the joys of parenthood. When I first started writing this review I didn’t think I hated the movie, but now I think it’s safe to say that I definitely hate this movie. Sandra Bullock deserves to be in better movies. B.D. Wong deserves to be in better movies. Hell, everyone in the cast deserves to be in better movies. And people who love movies deserve better movies to watch. Woo, that was pretty negative. Time to watch and report back on something that I’ll hopefully enjoy.
Recent Comments