BIRD BOX: Tonally Baffling, Neither Entertaining Nor Moving

Bird Box is a post-apocalyptic thriller directed by Susanne Bier, written by Eric Heisserer, and based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Josh Malerman. It chronicles the journey of survivors of the “Problem,” a mysterious other-worldly entity that drives those who see it to the point of insanity and forces them to commit suicide. Because of the nature of the Problem, Malorie (Sandra Bullock), must guide her children to a safe haven, blindfolded, after the group of survivors all succumb to the madness of the Problem.

Bird Box begins with a static-filled message about a nearby safe haven relayed over radio. This is where the post-apocalyptic film cliches begin, and they don’t stop. Malorie sternly prepares two children for a perilous journey down a river, blindfolded, in search of safety. We then travel backwards in time, five years earlier, to the onset of the chaos.

The flashbacks scenes not taking place on the river, even once the Problem’s chaos has fully made itself known, are bafflingly shot, with the glossy, warm, brightly lit visual character of a romantic comedy. What feels like a typical family dramedy setup involving Malorie, her pregnancy, her relationship with her sister Jessica (Sarah Paulson, charming and overall wasted on this film), and their deadbeat father, quickly devolves into post-apocalyptic chaos. People begin to commit suicide and ultimately, ten minutes into the film, Jessica throws herself into the path of a truck in a scene that is difficult to take seriously due to its cartoonish gore. 

Glitching television newscasts, announcements of closed borders, discussion of religious concepts of the end times; this film very quickly taps into all the formulaic post-apocalyptic shorthand it considers successful world-building. Rather than making effective or cohesive aesthetic choices, it invests in gory violence and genre standards, and makes halfhearted attempts at examining deeper psychological themes. Disparate choices are made throughout that create a film has no aesthetic identity, no emotional core, no thematic coherence, and little entertainment value.

“We have to be together.”

There is the sense that everyone involved with Bird Box is making choices in service of a different film; the filmmakers, the set designers, the editors, and the actors. Lil Rel Howery leans into an almost completely comedic tone with his performance. Trevante Rhodes as Tom exists almost entirely in a rom-com, flirtatious in his romantic interactions with Malorie, and charming as the surrogate father to her children later in the film. John Malkovich is firmly planted in a horror film, and Bullock is trying her best to navigate everything at once.

There are comedic moments that work in isolation in the flashback scenes, and these along with the continued glossy visual quality make every scene feel isolated from the next, making the genre and tone continually unclear. The set design doesn’t help; the home in which the group of the survivors stay for the majority of the film looks like it’s a set from a Nancy Meyers film, rather than a location that would inspire any sense of tension or suspense in the audience. 

The sequences that take place on the river, those that take place on Malorie’s blindfolded journey to the safe haven, are the most tense and most effective moments, and create a sense of tension and stakes in the way they are shot and edited, with the cold palette and urgency that enhances the sense of danger and isolation. These scenes have hints of The Road, Children of Men, or even Annihilation, and had this film been simply a journey of a mother and children through a wasteland without one of their senses, one that explored the psychology of fear, delusion and isolation, Bird Box may have been a success.

Bird Box has a talented cast trying its best throughout, but without any thematic identity or aesthetic cohesion, there is an overwhelming sense that the film has no idea what kind of movie it wants to be. 

“An image can still have power.”

 A ragtag group of survivors are brought together at the start of the film for seemingly no other reason than because the narrative structure of survival/post-apocalyptic stories often demands it, and the film seems uninterested in what any of the members of the group of survivors can bring to the story other than to raise the stakes of the film by dying one by one. Although the cast is packed with capable actors across the board, no one outside of the core cast of Bullock and Rhodes can seem to build a full fledged character out of what little they were given. Malorie’s connection with fellow pregnant survivor Olympia (Danielle MacDonald) is a high point for characterization, but otherwise the rest of the group provides very little, and with a cast of nearly a dozen characters the lack of much interpersonal connection feels like a huge missed opportunity.

This film would work as a metaphor if it had something to say about perception, about perspective, about disability, about mental health, about truth, or about motherhood. As it stands, it is a film with a a cast better than it deserves, a schmaltzy ending it hasn’t earned, and very little to say about the nature of fear and survival.

Bird Box: Conclusion

Bird Box has a novel core concept but has failed to build a cohesive film around it. The loss of the use of one’s eyesight with the addition of supernatural, apocalyptic elements could make an interesting film with something to say, but it seems to not want to put in the effort, and the result is a post-apocalyptic thriller that takes shortcuts instead of committing to tone, characterization, or sensical aesthetic choices. There are successful films buried within Bird Box; a horror comedy, a survival thriller, an unlikely post-apocalyptic romance, but Bird Box refuses to build any identity as a film beyond its concept.

Have you seen Bird Box? What did you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Bird Box was released in the US on December 14, 2018 and on Netflix on December 21, 2018.