BIRD BOX: The Seegull

Director: Susanne Bier
Writer: Eric Heisserer
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson
Runtime: 124 mins.
2018

It was immediately apparent upon seeing the first images of Bird Box splayed across Netflix's platform that the film was something along the lines of A Quiet Place, but this time with seeing.* What surprised me was that the film saw fit to take M. Night Shyamalan's most embarrassing film as its primary inspiration. Yes, just like The Happening, folks are killing themselves off left and right due to some invisible influence borne on the wind. In that movie, Science was the explanation; in this movie, Unexplained is the explanation.**

*Also this time there are two women giving birth in a perilous situation instead of one.
**Though there is about twenty seconds of extraordinarily awkward exposition about demons.

I cannot blame the film for holding on so closely to the enigmatic mystery at its center, since there is little else of interest going on here. It takes only a few minutes of runtime to ascertain that the film has made a fatal miscalculation. Bird Box sets us up for a post-apocalyptic fable in which Malorie (Sandra Bullock) and her wards Boy and Girl must travel downriver, blindfolded, in a last ditch attempt to find safety and community... then promptly dumps us into a flashback so that we can dwell on the minutiae of Malorie's dull backstory. In going out of its way to show the genesis of the apocalypse, Bird Box still whiffs on the one thing that The Happening actually had to offer; watching people off themselves in emotionless yet still overdramatic ways. There are only a handful of proper gore sequences, and they are shuffled past as if the film's attentions are elsewhere.

Where those attentions seem to lie is the relationship between Malorie and her children, which, since they are little more than speechless ciphers, amounts to her relationship with her own motherhood. These character moments tend to be forced; in one climactic scene, Bullock's character decides to not sacrifice the life of the little girl in order to gain a slight advantage in navigating the river, and we are apparently meant to be proud of her. Nevertheless, this is where the movie shines the most, as director Susanne Bier does an adequate job of wringing tension out of the scenario. Unfortunately, that aforementioned miscalculation continually rears its head, with the present day narrative of desperation weighed down by the incessant flashbacks that don't provide any context we couldn't have picked up from Bullock's performance. In fact, both halves of the movie manage to make each other worse, as the early material would play better without Bullock's monologue at the top of the film essentially explaining all we need to know about the threat.

Bullock herself is fine in the movie. Nobody in Bird Box is more than fine, as you can hardly expect them to be while spouting lame exposition or treacly sentiment. Everything on display is more or less competent, right down to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's tinkling score that sounds exactly like the musical combination of a bird and a box. Yet there is one more gaping hole in the center of the movie that Bird Box never quite figures out. Film is a visual medium, which is why A Quiet Place works so well--we can see the danger as we lean in to every creak and crack in the sound mix. Here, neither can we see the threat, nor can we participate in Malorie's disorientation, as the film refuses to situate us in her blindfolded perspective for more than a second or two at a time. A far better, leaner movie focused in on the present and willing to take some experimental risks could have made for a sharp little thriller. As it stands, Bird Box is some mediocre rubbish that seems algorithmically designed to remind you of other, more delightful movies.

1 / 5  BLOBS