Netflix’s post-apocalyptic Sandra Bullock vehicle Bird Box fumbles in the dark
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The once-wide aesthetic gap between film and television has functionally ceased to exist, and this year we saw a number of TV series shot to look like films, as our own Noel Murray noted last month. But while Hollywood’s obsession with tentpole filmmaking has sent a number of big-name auteurs to TV, it’s still rare to see the opposite: films that look and feel like an abbreviated season of television. Bird Box, Danish director Susanne Bier’s long-in-the-works post-apocalyptic Sandra Bullock vehicle, fits that bill.
The film starts promisingly enough, in an extended sequence where Bullock and Sarah Paulson, cleverly cast as sisters, volley barbed dialogue back and forth on the way to a OB-GYN appointment for the former’s heavily pregnant character, Malorie. Then the mysterious environmental disaster that’s been hovering in the background is suddenly, alarmingly foregrounded, and their drive home becomes a life-or-death obstacle course as random motorists and pedestrians start committing suicide en masse all around them. Apparently, the disaster is being caused by an unnamed, unknowable thing that makes (some) human beings immediately go insane and take their own lives upon seeing it—but not before their eyes (sometimes) turn a spooky shade of CGI purple.
All of this is explained after Malorie is rescued from the chaos on the street and pulled into the craftsman house where she holes up with a small band of survivors, including stoic Iraq-war veteran Tom (Trevante Rhodes), gun-toting MAGA asshole Douglas (John Malkovich), architect/homeowner Greg (BD Wong), naive and very pregnant housewife Olympia (Danielle Macdonald), and nerdy supermarket cashier Charlie (Lil Rel Howery), who conveniently happens to be obsessed with arcane lore applicable to this particular apocalyptic scenario. They’ll spend the next few years in that house, before Malorie is forced to flee with her and Olympia’s children, Boy (Julian Edwards) and Girl (Vivien Lyra Blair), who Malorie refused to name because she’s ambivalent about motherhood—a good indicator of the film’s aversion to subtlety. The group ends up embarking on a perilous river journey that doubles as a heavy-handed metaphor for personal sacrifice, and Bier cuts back and forth between her two timelines in a style reminiscent of episodic TV, complete with markers (“six hours on the river,” “18 hours on the river”) that would make perfect episode breaks.
Bird Box limits its scope but isn’t especially intimate; the ensemble cast is too large to fully develop in a couple of hours, but screenwriter Eric Heisserer tries anyway, writing in one-dimensional character beats and monologues that hint at longer (hourlong, perhaps?) and more satisfying backstories. It’s also high-concept without being particularly imaginative: Bier, best known for family dramas like After The Wedding and the Oscar-winning In A Better World, does little with the theme of blindness that runs through the film, and the massive time jumps similarly imply a more thorough (and more satisfying) exploration of this post-apocalyptic world over, say, 10 hours instead of two. And comparing Bird Box’s uninspired cinematography to TV would actually be an insult to TV at this point; budget is no excuse, as plenty of films with similarly modest price tags—Chloe Zhao’s The Rider comes to mind—boast stunning nature photography.
We never actually see the monster, whose presence is sometimes announced by a gust of wind and sometimes isn’t. It makes some people kill themselves and some people kill others. Sometimes victims die right away and sometimes they don’t. And sometimes the possession is obvious and sometimes it isn’t. The only immutable rule is that birds, presumably by virtue of their unique ocular anatomy, aren’t affected by the monsters, and can sense their presence à la a canary in a coal mine. And so, in this new post-apocalyptic world, Bullock keeps three of them as pets, first in a cage and then in the shabby cardboard box of the title. Perhaps these ideas are developed more effectively in Josh Malerman’s original novel. But given that Heisserer also adapted Arrival, it’s curious that the the script ended up so overstuffed and so shallow all at once.
Bird Box begins its rollout at a disadvantage: Although Malerman’s novel was published in 2014, John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place—whose premise is undeniably similar, except our protagonists must limit sound rather than sight to protect themselves—came out eight months ago. That would be bad enough if this was a thrilling original concept unfairly labeled a rip-off, but Bird Box has another problem: In terms of horror filmmaking, A Quiet Place outdoes it in every conceivable way. There are a few tense scenes scattered throughout—namely, a supermarket raid that also provides some of the film’s more effective laughs—but Bier allows them to slip away before they’ve really registered, failing to sustain the tension the way Krasinski did. In the end, Bird Box’s most significant shortcoming is that it’s just too inert and unfocused to work as sci-fi horror. As a midseason network drama, however, it’d work just fine.
82 Comments
I hadn’t heard of the book until I saw the trailer and so I picked it up (well, a virtual version anyway – the synergistic promotional system works!) and I quite enjoyed it. It was a decent read. Pretty cool how the author’s also a musician who wrote at least some of his books at least in part on tour buses.
Malerman’s band does the theme song to the US version of “Shameless”
It also sounds a lot like M. Night Shayamalan’s laughable horror flick ‘The Happening’, which also had mass suicides heralded by gusts of wind. How did such a derivative film get such a stacked cast?
But that at least taught us that trees are evil, a helpful PSA for anyone.
Well, if they keep the implication from the book …… mild speculative spoilers to follow …It’s not specifically stated but the implication is that the aliens? beings from another dimension? aren’t necessarily doing this on purpose. Some aspect of their appearance and or form/very existence just drives humans suicidal and sometime homicidal along the way when registered by the visual cortexThe reasoning behind that is that humans would be easy pickings for people who have to walk around blindfolded if the ‘invaders’ wanted to actively kill them but the entities seem to act like they’re just more curious and just want to look at things than anything else given they just allow blindfolded people to walk all around them (apparently) and at most might just pull at blindfolds. They may not even be aware or understand/comprehend what they’re doing……………….End Spoiler Speculation.
I imagined it originally as a sort of Lovecraftian thing…so otherworldly that you go bonkers, but it sounds like you’re saying it’s a sort of biological response?
That’s what I got from the book. While the creatures were interdimensional Lovecraftian alien beings who were so far removed from human comprehension just the sight of them drove people insane, they weren’t predatory in any way. They just seemed to be passively wandering around, maybe observing, or, like the humans, maybe just incapable of comprehending what they were seeing.I will say, based on the trailer, that this adaption looks terrible, that Sandra Bullock has had so much work done she is starting to look like Michael Jackson, and one’s mid-fifties seems a bit long in the tooth to be getting accidentally pregnant…
Ok, but if I was taking a YEARS-LONG stroll on an alien planet and I saw that everywhere I went, all the little creatures that saw me were driven into fits of homicidal or suicidal range, I would probably end my vacation early and go somewhere else.
That is interesting and makes a lot more sense. The movie definitely doesn’t take that approach though. Particularly near the end, the beings are certainly malevolent.
I don’t see Kat Dennings here.
HEY-OH!
That was my first thought as well. If one considers ancient greek stories as an inspiration (the Medusa myth), this concept of “only way to escape the evil is not to look at it” is even older than Shymalan. A lot older.
I was thinking when I saw they were making a movie of this that there’s no way it wouldn’t come off as similar to The Happening.The book was pretty good, but it’s a concept that couldn’t possibly translate well to the screen. You don’t have to detail the monster when it’s on page, but a visual medium is going to require that. Otherwise, yeah we’re apparently getting a lot of wind-noise… just like The Happening
At least Bird Box has monsters…although very inconsistent monsters. Oh and the cast wasn’t hit in the forehead with paint cans.
The book was being written before The Happening was written. The author didn’t get any inspiration from the movie.
I was less impressed with Heisserer’s adaptation of “The Story of Your Life”. All the political conflict stuff he added just seemed like Hollywood BS. I suppose nobody would have made a film without that added, but that doesn’t make it seem any better.
so it’s like that other movie where you can’t talk you get it.Next rehash. Hearing will get you killed. Oh but wait, they did that already on climax of “Dollhouse” (you didn’t die, a new personality just gets downloaded into your brain)
Well, I do believe Preacher had the Word of God which made it very handy to be deaf or at least not understand English.
Tasting can kill you.“Honey, you should try this yogurt.”
“Sharon, NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!”
Speaking of Dollhouse, we’re just a few days from the year that happens in the show.
So, this is the sequel to The Blind Side, right?
No, to Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance).
The book was really great so its a shame they haven’t been able to pull of the adaptation.I’ll still give it a whirl when it gets released but my expectations are now firmly in check.
they did. dont just trust this review, although i understand the reviewer’s complaints. its a very enjoyable and just watchable movie.
In order to capitalize on this trend of horror films revolving around being utterly silent, or covering one’s eyes to survive, I would like to announce my new horror film, a world where only those without their olfactory sense are safe from being driven mad by a mysterious odor that permeates the world. I call it “Silent…but DEADLY.”
it doesn’t stink!
The twist at the end is that the character who originally smelt it is in fact the one who dealt it.
WHO LEAKED MY SCRIPT!?! LAWSUIT!
To be fair, the part where its revealed the stink monster was the result of the merger of White Castle and Taco Bell and their new experimental Taco Slider seemed a bit silly.
Just cut off my nose!
NO! There’s still hope. Don’t spite your face yet!
Maybe just punch it enough so I can’t smell anymore? I can be the “immune” person who saves everyone because my nose is stuffed with clots… That’s gross nevermind
The finale will just be everyone punching everyone else in the nose. Our hero punching old ladies and children and babies.
It’s the role Nicolas Cage was born to play.
By Any Other Name by Spider Robinson.1977 Hugo Award – Best Novella. Good read, I’d recommend it. Telempath is the same story stretched to novel length.
“He who smelled it, dealt it!”
Bird Box,Danish director Susanne Bier’s long-in-the-works post-apocalyptic Sandra Bullock vehicle, fits that bill.
She keeps the birds in a box? That is unlawful confinement, lady! This is an outrageous violation of basic bird law!
Those birds managed to survive being kept in a box for two days at the end of the boat trip there was also very powerful rapids that made the boat tipped over.
They’re the real heroes. Hell, those birds have more survival instincts than those stupid kids.
So is there a metaphor going on in that title or what, go ahead and wreck it for me
They literally carry birds in a box. Birds offer a warning of danger.
When a movie won’t name its characters it’s either really old and possibly good, possibly bad, or it’s recent and guaranteed to suck
The characters are named. Enjoy.
Wasn’t “Mallory” also Bullock’s character name in both Natural Born Killers and Family Ties?
Meanwhile, my unproduced screenplay imagines a world where tasting anything immediately gets you killed, and the huddled remnants of humanity survive on English cuisine and Karen’s potato salad.TASTELESS: Stay out of Flavour Country.
White people would love it!
*screams in Guy Fieri*
This also bears a strong resemblance to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening. Zooey Deschanel and Marky Mark are adrift in a world in which pissed off plants make people kill themselves.
It’s nothing like the happening. That’s like saying Airplane is similar to Scary Movie 5 because they are both spoof movies.
I was very much on the fence about this one. Sadly it seems like my concerns were correct and it likely isn’t worth the time investment. Even the trailer made it seem like the monster/effect/whatever wasn’t very consistent.
I know I was hesitant by the trailer and the reviews have almost sealed its fate. Definitely should’ve gotten a more deft thriller director to navigate a complicated adaptation.
Honestly, it’s not that bad. Give it a watch.
Don’t base your decision on this review. I hope you’ll be more entertained than what this review suggests.
nothing is more annoying than a great book adapted into a shitty film that would have been a great television series.The Golden Compass, World War Z, The Dark Tower…and now Bird Box.
give it a chance, it does the book justice imo.
new His Dark Materials series coming soonAmazing how bad The Gunslinger was.
I know, I’m so stressed out! And Dune casting has me ambivalent right now…
? Chalamet is a little old for the part but the casting sounds okay so far to me. I love Skarsgard…I had been hoping Bautista was going to be Duncan Idaho (maybe Daniel Wu from Into the Badlands? the cast could use some diversity) but full villain is goodAnd also Good Omens in the pipeline.
Agreed. I sincerely hope they don’t feel like just because the characters were written white they have to stay white and we see some diverse casting.Not sure how big a Dune fan you are, but I feel like a better choice than remaking Dune for a third time would be to adapt the prequels, which are ripe for a sprawling big budget sci-fi series with a massive cast. The Butlerian Jihad, the Machine Crusade and The Battle of Corrin would be so cool on the big screen. Frickin’ giant mech-robots named Agamemnon in walker bodies.
Maybe if the movies do well we will get a Duneiverse. I only know the first three books, and even that was quite some time ago. I don’t see any reason why they have to be “consistent” in races for the casting at all, Michael B. Jordan for FEYD-RAUTHA DARK HEART that is all
lol get out of my brain i’ve just been sitting here thinking “Who will Michael B Jordan be?”
before she turned to darkness she had something: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjUoeazviPQ
I’ll bet Sarah Paulson has an ugly-cry scene. It’s in her contract that she has to ugly-cry in every project she does.
more like an ugly die scene
The thing I really didn’t like about the movie is the implication early on that the creatures are somehow appearing as different things to different people and are probably either angelic or demonic. Bullshit. I much prefer in the book where you never have even the slightest hint of what they are, including whether or not they actually know what effect they’re having or mean any harm in the first place.
This was good fun. It kept the tension and momentum, without crosssing in to too much overt horror, the fear kept in the viewers mind. Well worth checking out if you like the leads, and like a bit of tense viewing.
[Spoilery] The “blindness” premise naturally works really well in a nonvisual medium like a book, because you’re forced to imagine what the monsters might look like and you gain access to the characters’ internal monologues. You really do feel blindfolded too, which adds to the tension marvelously.I predicted that it wouldn’t work quite as well in a movie, with the slightly goofy visual cues of leaves blowing and ‘chasing’ them to keep things interesting (which is quite different from the behavior in the book; the cues are very ambiguous and nonvisual, just the omnipresent danger that they might be wandering right in front of you). I guess that’s why they added the ‘cult’ guys driving around at the end, to add some visually-identifiable danger and not make it so much like The Happening.But one aspect that I thought was a really good use of the visual format was the scene where Gary was spreading out the drawings of the creatures. I thought that was an efficiently clever, and creepy, way to indirectly tease how humans perceive the creatures. I always thought they would look like some mixture of Lovecraftian or weirdly geometric, and the drawings looked like the former.
Rosa Salazar and Machine Gun Kelly aren’t mentioned at all in this review, which I guess seems about right, since their characters randomly decide to run away for literally no reason whatsoever at one point.
they fell in love!jk they just screwed and then immediately booked. yeah that was weird but i still liked it overall.
I assumed she took him to go live at the grocery store.
That’s what I said! My wife just kind of shrugged my idea off.
I knew the comments on this would be incredibly entertaining and you guys did not disappoint.
Has Sandra Bullock been in anything truly edgy or independent? I feel like if her name is on a movie it’s gonna be a mass appeal corporate venture. I find her bland.
gravity should count but its debatable
Our Brand Is Crisis?
I don’t know, I look at her IMDB, and there’s a lot of what you describe, but also a lot of stuff I’ve never heard of.
this was fucking good man i dont even care. its not a “great film” or whatever but its one of the most enjoyable times ive had watching a movie all year. itd be just on the outskirts of my top 10 list for 2018. around 12 or 13 right alongside A Quiet Place, which this was every bit as good as.
I agree. It wasn’t bad. It’s not reinventing the wheel but it didn’t offend me and it delivered some solid suspense and emotion.
Didn’t see Bird Box until well after this review. But can’t help noting the reviewer somehow missed the dramatic climax of the film, which organizes most of the movie. The key thing to note is the boy is Malorie’s son and the girl is Olympia’s daughter. Also, didn’t see The Quiet Place because monsters you can lure into a trap don’t sound like a threat unless they’re plot armored. But it sounds like a horror movie dedicated to chills rather than a life-altering decision of the protagonist. Perhaps though, it’s The Quiet Place’s similar premise to Bird Box that misled the reviewer into forgetting another very similar Sandra Bullock movie: Gravity.
Yes it was derivative, a bit clunky, and John Malkovich turned in a overacted performance better suited for a Broadway play (as he has done in every film in the last 15 years), but I got a little choked up with the scenes with Boy and Girl, especially the one where Girl offered to die. It’s emotional drama aspects were better than its horror aspects. I felt it effectively created the relationships it needed to for its made-for-streaming medium, and I liked the black guy who was her post-apoc b/f also. Was overall enjoyable. As for someone getting pregnant accidentally at 50, hey, it happened to my friend’s mom even AFTER getting her tubes tied. Miracles can happen.
Having seen neither The Happening nor A Quiet Place, I enjoyed it. I especially liked the gradually erupting chaos at the beginning. There’s a neat shot early on where you see the leaf thing happening out a window, before it’s established as a sign of the things. The rapids were a bit of a cheat — a looming threat through half the movie, and they simply survive while completely ducking the Sophie’s Choice.