Review of Bird Box (2018) by Madarasi012 — 22 Dec 2018

I couldn’t help but compare Bird Box to A Quiet Place. Both movies have a unique twist on sensory depravation. In A Quiet Place, that was sound—any noise would get you killed, as it showed so brutally in the first fifteen minutes of the movie. In Bird Box, it’s sight.

The story of Bird Box is narrated in two parts: the now and five years ago, when the outbreak first occurs. The film maintains a solid pace at the beginning, but it drags on as it reaches its two-hour mark.

It is clear that filmmaker Susanne Bier, director of The Night Manager, wanted Malorie to have a sort of saviour arc, going from being a pregnant and uncertain as to whether or not she’ll love her child, to being a mother to her child and another’s, realising her love for them as she’s saving them from the presence. This, however, is not handled as well as it could’ve been because of how the film is written; it tries to straddle the line between sci-fi horror and emotional, psychological drama/thriller, and falls poorly in the middle, choosing neither camp and suffering for it. Furthermore, there is no emotional connection to these characters, and watching the story of the past was pointless in terms of actually connecting with the characters as we knew they were going to die anyway. Finally, what would be the nail in the coffin (box?), would be that the characters are one-note and fail to be anything more than tropes of the genre.

However, because of its cast and cinematography, Bird Box is an entertaining-enough watch, albeit with a fair number of flaws and, if you’ve found yourself with nothing to do over the weekend, you might as well give it a go.