With the release of the spinoff film Bird Box Barcelona right around the corner, it’s high time to revisit the original Bird Box and see if it holds up. “Holds up” might not even be the right word, considering how divisive it was upon release in 2018, but I for one, had a good time with it half a decade ago and was curious to open it back up and take a peek inside.
The movie, based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Josh Malerman, follows what results when unknowable Lovecraftian creatures arrive on Earth and send most everyone who sees them for even a second into a self-destructive frenzy. The rash of mass suicides strikes Northern California right when pregnant artist Malorie (Sandra Bullock) and her sister Jessica (Sarah Paulson) are at a prenatal doctor’s appointment. As the world begins to crumble around her, Malorie holes up in a ritzy suburban house with a ragtag group of survivors, including the handsome and caring Tom (Trevante Rhodes), the belligerent drunk Douglas (John Malkovich), and an assortment of less fleshed-out characters (played by a host of recognizable character actors and Machine Gun Kelly).
The rest of the film follows their attempts to survive this post-apocalyptic world where to look outside is to die. Mileage will vary with this, especially considering just how many post-apocalyptic movies have done the same things better, including Night of the Living Dead and Bird Box’s closest analog, A Quiet Place. However, it has some unique elements to offer, especially regarding the inherent terror of the premise itself.
Opening Pandora’s (Bird) Box
Bird Box sports a tremendously malleable premise. The inroad by which I relate to it the most is the fact that I have severe photosensitivity. The idea of desperately wanting to open your eyes to understand something about the world, but knowing that doing so will hurt you, is one that strikes me to my core. But watching the movie now in a post-2020 world, it would take an act of sheer willpower not to notice the parallels to the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m certain there are a dozen other ways for the core function of these monsters to strike fear into one’s heart in a way that feels personal and harrowing.
The movie does make good cinematic use of its unseen creatures in a few moments as well, most notably in a sequence where some of the survivors are driving down the street in a car with blacked-out windows, using only the car’s proximity sensors and their own ears to track the horrifying devastation through which they’re traveling. Beyond those scenes, however, ultimately, the scariest elements of the movie are holdovers from the source novel rather than anything exciting that is going on in the filmmaking itself.
Bird Box Clips Its Own Wings
The entire thing is drenched in the blue-grey digital sheen that was as close as Netflix got to a house style back in the early days. It does absolutely nothing to highlight anything pertinent about the premise or the tension therein. Instead, it just renders it cold, unfeeling, and bleak, which is absolute murder in the more tedious scenes of the group gathered together, not doing much of anything. This is pretty disappointing in terms of using cinematic devices to bolster the story. Still, the absolute worst narrative decision the movie makes is a holdover from the book too, so I suppose it’s a little bit everyone’s fault: the framework narrative that keeps cutting to Malorie five years down the line is a tension-shredding misfire that adds nothing and ends up spoiling the events of the rest of the movie within the first five seconds or so.
Certainly, the best thing that Bird Box as a work of cinema brings to the table is Sandra Bullock. This is an actor who knows in her bones how to blend grit and relatability (no joke, you can draw a direct line from the opening scenes of Miss Congeniality to Bird Box), and she is the perfect person to breathe life into what is a frankly pretty boring motherhood-focused character arc that has been done a hundred times before and since (even by her, in the Oscar-winning masterpiece Gravity). The rest of the cast is mostly delivering as well (especially Malkovich), serving up stock characters on a silver platter, except Jacki Weaver, who seems completely lost at sea as to who the hell her underwritten character is even supposed to be.
How Does Bird Box Hold Up?
All in all, on rewatch, Bird Box isn’t exactly making a case for itself as a top-shelf viewing option in a world inundated with post-apocalyptic media. However, it is still a decent way to pep up your laundry-folding routine, as well as being the superior version of this particular story. Though the best things in the movie come from the book, I am no huge fan of the book and find its approach to dialogue much more frustrating than anything going wrong in the movie.
The things Bird Box the movie does poorly are merely generic rather than genuinely bad. Plus, the things it does well, it does really well. I just wish there were more of them. Perhaps Bird Box Barcelona can right some of these wrongs, but I suppose we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?
7/10