That’s it? That’s the movie that became a phenomenon in December 2018? I expected something more. Not something better necessarily. Just more. Maybe more playing with the blindness. Maybe some camp. I’m not sure. Just something to explain why this movie hit so hard.
To be fair, I didn’t come to this movie as open to being won over as I could’ve been. I waited this long to see it after all. At the time it was blowing up, I got annoyed by it and opted out*. Where most Netflix movie I approach with unjudging curiosity, I came to Bird Box expecting it to show me something. That’s not a great way to watch anything.
*Also, mid-December I was already busy catching up on other year-end movies.
Where I land with Bird Box is that it’s a pretty decent movie although I still don’t get why it blew up. Like, why did TikTok pick up on Bird Box but not See? It’s a mystery. Probably just comes down to timing. Netflix is good at producing a zeitgeist hit around Christmas. Making a Murderer in 2015, Bird Box in 2018, and Birdgerton in 2020 all come to mind.
The cast in this is pretty strong. Sandra Bullock is always good. I like when she gets to play a sterner role, like she does around the kids in particular. It’s a surprisingly deep roster of familiar actors with a lot of variety. The actual apocalypse scenes are well done. While the entities or whatever that cause the killing are pretty silly and weakly defined, the end effect is pretty cool. Coming 8 months after A Quiet Place, I will say Bird Box doesn’t catch the visceral terror as much. You can use sound for tension a lot easier than sight. Bird Box doesn’t master the horror of having to do things when you can’t see or the challenge of resisting the urge to sneak a peek. It all seems a little too easy.
Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend
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