Dark Film Review: Bird Box
Review by Casey Douglass
I heard about Bird
Box in an almost incidental way. I saw a few pictures of Sandra
Bullock’s Malorie with her blindfold on, and had a friend recommend
it to me as a bit like A Quiet Place, but with blindfolds
instead of sign language. I managed to miss the apparent hype that
has taken place since its release, but having seen it today, I’m
glad I took the time to give it a look.
Strange entities are
causing breakouts of mass suicide around the world, and these
creatures or beings only seem to trigger this impulse when looked
upon by humans. Bird Box follows Malorie and her two young
children as they try to get to sanctuary, while also filling in the
backstory of what happened by way of jumping forward and back in the
timeline. The “current” time-frame is their dangerous blindfolded
boat journey along a river. The older time-frame shows the day the
outbreak reached Malorie’s city, and the path her survival takes as
civilisation grinds to a halt around her. Both have their own
challenges.
Bird Box is
mostly a siege-type horror, the survivors having to barricade
themselves into their houses, blocking windows with newspaper and
keeping the doors locked The necessity of venturing out at
different times does add a bit of variety to things, even if it’s just
a case of exchanging one secure location for another. The “not
being able to look” aspect is done very well, the entities being
alluded to by shadow, movement and sound, as well as various
interactions in the environment, from technology to bird song. It’s
interesting to watch the various ways in which the characters try to
use what is at hand to work around this peril, and like any decent
tale, not everything works out in the way that they hope it might.
Bird Box seems
to be a film very much about connection, or the lack of it. In the
early flashback scenes, Malorie is painting a picture of lonely
people and talks about not having to leave the house. There is also
an eerie hospital corridor populated by people wholly engrossed in
their phones. Yet once the mass suiciding begins and people find
themselves thrust together, there is almost too much connection,
especially as it becomes apparent that you have to be wary of who you
open the door to. John Malkovich’s Douglas is a good example of
someone who straddles this line, but in many ways, trusting an honest
arsehole might just be better than putting your faith in a friendly
stranger. There is also the literal connection between the
blindfolded people holding hands and trying to get to where they want
to go, which happens on more than one occasion.
Bird Box is a
creepy, rather than scary film, one that taps into the fear of the
unknown and unseen, rather than falling into the common trap of
showing too much of the threat. The suicides are both varied and
realistic, but none felt overly gory or gratuitous, which is a nice
surprise. I’m certainly a fan of gore, but when it’s kept on the
down low, I can respect that too. The central “not being allowed to
look” idea certainly contributed an extra dimension to the tension
on screen, especially when people become separated, and the simple
act of others looking for them becomes an almost impossible task. There’s
that connection theme again.
I enjoyed Bird Box,
the two or so hour run time didn’t feel like a drag, and that’s a
rare thing for me when watching a film, so it must have had something
about it. If you have Netflix and this pops up on your suggestion
list, give it a watch.
P.S. I’d love to see
a cross-over film where the entities of Bird Box team up with
the creatures of A Quiet Place. They would each seem to cover
the other’s weaknesses and between them, might actually achieve wiping out humanity, rather than falling prey to stubborn upstarts
who don't know when they are licked. A Quiet Box. I
like the sound of that.
Film Title: Bird Box
Starring: Sandra
Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich.
Director:
Susanne Bier
Genre: Horror,
Post-apocalyptic
Rating:
15
Released: Dec 2018 on Netflix
Released: Dec 2018 on Netflix
