Finally Getting Around to "Bird Box"

By the time that I got around to watching Bird Box the phenomenon was very much over.

Released on December 21, 2018, the horror film became a sensation almost immediately. Internet memes parodying the film flooded the worldwide web, and then videos starting popping up on social media of the “Bird Box Challenge” in which participants attempted the most rudimentary of tasks while blindfolded.

Netflix, who seldom releases viewing figures, said that within the first four weeks of the release of Bird Box that the film reached 80 million viewers.

Yet, from the beginning, opinion was divided on the movie. Some said that it was a unique, enthralling apocalyptic thriller. Others claimed that it was little more than a cheap knockoff of 2018’s earlier horror success, A Quiet Place.

For my part, the parallels to A Quiet Place were tenuous at best, but Bird Box still proved to be a disappointment.

Perhaps the most upsetting aspect of the film is that its incredible potential feels squandered. The story finds Mallorie (Sandra Bullock), a young artist, fighting to stay alive amongst a small group of survivors as the world is ravaged by creatures whose might is enough to induce insanity and suicide.

Bullock is the obvious star of the film, but she is complemented by an ensemble cast made up of so many familiar faces including Trevante Rhodes (perhaps best known for his role in the 2017 Best Picture-winner Moonlight), John Malkovich, Lil Rel Howery and Sarah Paulson.

However, star power does not make a film, as this assembled horde of familiar faces feels wasted in their underwritten roles. Malkovich, in particular, chews scenery like never before, and Sarah Paulson is gone almost as soon as she had arrived.

Bullock, then, caries much of the film on her shoulders and, to her credit, she does an admirable job. The scenes she shares with young actors Julian Edwards and Vivien Lyra Blair as Boy and Girl respectively, are invested with real emotional weight due in no small part to Bullock’s playing of the distant and standoffish Mallorie.

The generally lackluster performances do not help to salvage what could have been an exciting concept for a horror film. The notion that the world has been taken over by unknown beasts who can will humanity into ending their lives is a tantalizing one for any viewer with a taste for the macabre. 

And to the film’s credit, its realization of such creatures – never once allowing us to get a glimpse of them – is well done and suggestive that the monsters are simply too horrendous to even visualize. As a rare example of H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror on film, Bird Box is pretty much unmatched.

However, Bird Box is bogged down by a painfully slow narrative which seems to only be marking time in between gruesome set-pieces. Even the sequences which were obviously designed to create suspense and push audiences to the edges of their seats seldom follow through on their intentions.

As Bird Box felt as if it were entering its third hour, I paused the movie only to see that 45 minutes had gone by. To be boring is, I think, the worst crime that any film – let alone a horror film – can commit.

There are a few noteworthy things about the movie: the visual effects are excellently handled (especially for a film with a comparatively low budget) and cinematography by Salvatore Totino gives the film an appropriately cold, bleak tone. These aspects go little way towards rescuing Bird Box though.

Bird Box was not a total disaster, but I am inclined to think that the social media firestorm which greeted the film upon its release was quite unfounded. As a horror movie with a unique story to tell, I applaud Bird Box.

I just wish it had done it better.