For a film that’s premise was so promising, I felt as though Bird Box could have been something memorable. Instead, we got something that didn’t live up to it’s plot/intensity & I walked away feeling underwhelmed.
Bird Box had far too many dire moments for it to be deemed as an acceptably good movie. There were things I just didn’t anticipate & not in a good way. It made the film feel cheap, tacky & rushed. I will always be highly critical of movies that don’t take themselves seriously, but only if the movie itself is a serious one & Bird Box certainly fits into that category.
However, despite there being fundamental plot flaws, moments of ridiculousness & scenes that would simply not happen (even in most B rated movies), Sandra Bullock & her journey to find a potential safe-haven, save the Bird Box from being a complete and utter disaster.
Some readers may not agree with how blunt I’ve been, although, if you asked those very same people to be completely honest in what they thought, they would also come to the same conclusion as I have. That being said, not every single minute of this movie was horrendous. Susanne Bier, the Director, did maintain a high level of intensity throughout most of Bird Box. The story itself is an unusual one, but I liked it. In a nutshell, something has swarmed Earth & whoever it comes into contact with, it destroys & the only way it destroys you, is if you look at it. Once you have looked at ‘it’, you are essentially a goner, but it’s not a ‘one size fits all’ type of corruption. Some people commit suicide, some would intentionally kill others who hadn’t looked at it & so on and so forth. Whatever this thing was, all it wanted to do was to eradicate the host and other humans.
After the entire run-time had elapsed, I never quite understood what the threat was, but that’s not to say you wouldn’t. I did ponder for a little while as to whether I may have missed something, or perhaps I failed to see what was right in front of me the entire time. All that I knew is that I was glad it was over. I always had this feeling that the film was never going to amount to anything & it was never building up to anything. For me, I was right on both counts. The fact that John Malkovich was casted for Birdbox didn’t help either. In fact, it just made things worse. I, generally, enjoy his performances, but I couldn’t help but feel that he was recruited for the simple fact of ‘we need another famous face to bring in the viewers’ & he was, unfortunately/fortunately (depending on which side of the coin you’re looking at it from), that guy.
The idea of this story/movie was great, yet the budget wasn’t there & the moments of ‘did that scene really just happen!?’ needed to be edited out indefinitely. Bird Box will always be a movie that had the foundation to be something people could fondly remember. Unfortunately, what transpired, was something you will very quickly forget about.