Bird Box has been on Netflix for less than a week and I already feel like I'm late to this party. Clearly, what I'm taking away from my viewing last night is that someone watched The Happening, realized it was a sewage burrito wrapped up in a stale carcass and decided to re-do it with some competence. I hadn't actually seen anything on the film advertised (which is the downside of movies on Netflix), but it generated some buzz early and the starpower of Sandra Bullock has helped it take off to become Netflix's most popular film of probably the entire year (I'm just guessing - research would have to be involved, and I'm feeling particularly lazy today). Netflix has been churning out original content so much that it's hard to gauge what to spend your time on and what to skip, but at least for this film, a film that would've done very well in theaters I imagine, it's certainly worth your time.
Much like The Happening starts, Bird Box tells the tale of some weird global epidemic where people are committing mass suicide. It starts in Europe and then makes its way over to us. Sandra Bullock plays Mallorie, a pregnant, reclusive artist living in the Bay area of California. Her sister (Sarah Paulson) is her only connection to the outside world. Mallorie is pregnant, but her dude has left her and she's not exactly excited about the prospect of being a mother. She feels she won't have that motherly instinct of connecting immediately with her child. After a checkup at the hospital, the attack begins. This time, it's not "the trees" exterminating mankind, but it's some sort of unseen monster or monsters that if you look at them, your eyes glaze over in an eerie crimson and you off yourself without hesitation. Mallorie barely survives and holes up in a house with other random survivors who include John Malkovich, Trevante Rhodes, Lil Rel Howery, BD Wong, and Jacki Weaver. The film goes back and forth between the house of volatile survivors and five years in the future when Mallorie is on her own traversing a river with two blindfolded children trying to make it to an alleged safe haven.
While the movie isn't perfect, it's certainly a hell of a lot better than The Happening. While both films begin with an intriguing premise, it's Bird Box that actually delivers on the premise. The two biggest differences here are tension (of which The Happening had none) and actual three-dimensional characters (which, again, The Happening sorely lacked - seriously, Mark Wahlberg was a science teacher??). Both movies saw an unseen force affecting the minds of ordinary citizens and forcing them to kill themselves, but Bird Box succeeds in upping the tension because there is an actual visual force that is doing this to people. We only get glimpses of it in shadow or in drawings, but the fact that there is a malicious creature out there doing this makes the film even that more suspenseful and terrifying. And we get to figure out the rules of the creatures along with the characters to add to the fear and excitement. How much of the creatures do you have to see in order to become affected? Do the creatures know how to cut the power? Do they enter houses? Can you look at them on a video? Will they attack you inside of a car? Figuring out the rules of these things along with our characters lends to most of the terror of the movie. The other side of that is when Mallorie is alone with the kids. They're blindfolded 90% of the time we know them and they're trying to go down a river without being able to see. We hear forces around them, we know how kids don't necessarily listen to adult figures and don't necessarily understand the gravity of certain situations. So, the tension here is upped even further.
Then there's the characters. Kudos to director Susanne Bier for making a movie with probably the most diverse cast of the year. The house is mostly female. There's the old, racist white dude. The kind black man. The funny black man. The Latina cop. The gay Asian. Like, this movie has diversity COVERED. And they're all pretty well-rounded. Sure, Bier spends most of her time with Mallorie, but we get insight into each person and they're not just defined by their occupation or their interests or their pasts or their sexualities. They're genuine people who, if this situation actually occurred, you could find yourself in a house with. As always, Bullock is phenomenal. She's ice cold toward her children, who she only calls Boy and Girl because, as we see from her past, we're not sure if she actually couldn't make a connection with them, or if she loves them so much she knows what could happen to them in an instant, and doesn't want to make a connection for fear of losing them. Rhodes of Moonlight fame delivers here as well, showing the makings of a superstar he's destined to become. Malkovich plays slimy just as he always has - with a grin on his face and black in his heart. He's always fun to watch playing an evil curmudgeon. The rest of the cast is put together nicely to really make this movie FEEL theatrical, even though we all watched it at home on our TV screens.
Bird Box has its flaws as well. While we do get to discover the rules along with the rest of the characters, there are still a lot of questions leftover. The biggest one is why the creatures don't enter houses? Why are there some people who can look at them and be affected in a homicidal way instead of a suicidal way? Who gets what outcome? And my biggest gripe with the film I'll put below in a SPOILER section in case those of you who haven't seen it are waiting for my go-ahead. As for that, it's definitely worth watching. It's suspenseful, entertaining, and pretty scary throughout without resorting to jump scares and letting the ambiance of the situation take charge. It's got a little bit of the good from A Quiet Place and none of the bad from The Happening to make a worthwhile night at home at the movies. Spoilers below.
SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET. DON'T LOOK PAST THIS.
Okay, so I think my biggest complaint about the film is the fact that it continuously switches timelines throughout the movie and doesn't give the audience a reason for the transitions like something unexpected. We get scenes when she's in the house with everyone and five years later alone with the kids. In our brains we know that most, if not all, have probably died, we just don't know how. But usually when something is set up like that, it's to subvert the audience's expectations and give us something UNexpected. This didn't happen. Everyone except Tom dies in the house. Five years later, Tom is with Mallorie and the kids at the cabin. But we know he's not with her when she's in the boat... so what happens to him? Does he stay back to protect them and magically show up at the end? What's the ace up the sleeve?
The answer is nothing. He just saves them and kills himself exactly as we thought happened to him when we realized five years later she was alone. So, the point of the jumping back and forth between the years was what exactly? How was the movie elevated by telling it this way rather than chronologically? It's really the only thing that bugged me. I was very much entertained by the rest.
B
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