Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bird Box’ on Netflix, Sandra Bullock’s Blindfolded Horror Triumph

Just when you thought you were getting out of 2018 without Netflix scaring the crap out of you, here comes Bird Box, the Sandra Bullock movie about a monster that you can’t even look at or else you’ll commit suicide. Good luck luck trying to live in the world now!

BIRD BOX: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Bullock plays Malorie, a single, pregnant artist who takes a pretty hardened outlook on the world, something that stems in part from a neglectful father. But there’s no time to linger on that, because pretty much right away, the entire world gets enveloped by an unseen mass psychosis, which presents itself as mass suicides. As Malorie and a small band of strangers hole up in a nearby house, they figure out that once people see whatever creature (or creatures) seem to be out there, they see their worst fear, and then they kill themselves. These scenes right after the initial outbreak are interspersed with scenes from another timeline, as Malorie and two young children must navigate their way down a treacherous river wearing blindfolds so they don’t see the monster.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Two movies are most obviously reminiscent: one is A Quiet Place, which is so recent as to be an unavoidable comparison. Both movies feature families (either biological families or ad-hoc apocalyptic families) dealing with world-ruining monsters that require the abandonment of one of the senses in order to survive. In A Quite Place, it’s no sound; in Bird Box, it’s no sight. A Quiet Place does a better job of sketching out the ways in which a family would learn to survive without making any noises, and watching their routine is satisfyingly clever. Bird Box spends so much time in the immediate aftermath; we see them figure out small things, like how birds are apparently proximity warning systems for the monster(s), but it’s less of an elaborate feat of production design.

The other movie Bird Box reminds you of, on the lesser end, is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, which is not nearly as good a movie as Bird Box is, but which utilized a lot of the same “wind rustling ominously through trees” imagery. (Don’t worry, the twist in Bird Box isn’t that the wind is out to get us.)

Performance Worth Watching: While the supporting cast is filled to bursting with good-to-great performances from the likes of John Malkovich (hammy but enjoyably so), Trevante Rhodes (proving that the charisma he showed in Moonlight was no fluke), and Danielle Macdonald (the Dumplin’ star who is proving herself to be quite versatile), this is Sandra Bullock’s show, and she absolutely nails it. From minute one, she’s a harder, less compromising, just this side of nasty screen presence, but she’s so controlled. This isn’t just a lazy 180-degree turn away from her natural “nice” persona. There’s intention, backstory, and layers and layers of subtext in how she intently, angrily hammers home her instructions to the kids as they prepare to venture out into a world that couldn’t be more dangerous.

Memorable Dialogue: Bullock’s “Never, EVER take off your blindfold” monologue that opens the film is so incredibly arresting. It sells the premise of the film, the danger of the monster, and the fortitude of her character all at once. She calls the little girl Girl and the little boy Boy. She threatens them if they don’t listen. She tells them they will die if they don’t listen. It’s a monologue so good, director Susanne Bier essentially reprises it in the middle of the film:

Listen to me, because I’m only going to say this once: we are going on the trip now. It’s going to be rough. It’s gonna feel like it’s going on for a long time, so it’s gonna be hard to stay alert, it’s gonna be even harder to be quiet, but you have to do both. You have to do every single thing I say or we will not make it. Understand? Under no circumstance are you allowed to take off your blindfold. If I find out you have, I will hurt you. Do you understand? It’s cold. We have blankets. Boy, you have your dog; Girl, you have your kitty. This is just a place. There is nothing more that we need from it. Do you understand? And no. Talking. On the river. You must listen as closely as you can. If you hear something in the woods, you tell me. If you hear something in the water, you tell me. But you NEVER, EVER take off your blindfold. If you look, you will die. Do you understand? 

Single Best Shot: Susanne Bier and cinematographer Salvatore Totino really deliver some A+ visuals on that river. The most effective and scary is when Malorie and the kids encounter a strange voice calling from the distance. Malorie knows he’s a threat, but she’s blinded so she can’t see him coming. That’s where his shot comes in.

Sex and Skin: It’s brief, but it’s satisfying if you’re down for skinny white boys with tattoos or Rosa Salazar. Early on, police cadet Lucy (Salazar) and pessimistic scumbum Felix (Machine Gun Kelly) end up flirting with each other. They’re both young and attractive, and it’s the apocalypse, so “only if you were the last man on Earth” rules apply. So one night early on when Malorie goes to investigate a suspicious noise, she finds this:

Our Take: There are two halves of this movie, presenting two very different horror movies. The events in the house, in the early days of the outbreak, take on the tenor of a classic “who will die next” war of attrition. You start wondering which characters will get bumped off next (and you’re almost always correct). It’s well acted and the characters are sympathetic, but it’s predictable. The second half of the movie, which is interspersed throughout, is the part where Malorie and the two young kids try to traverse the river and make it to some kind of sanctuary. That part is not only visually arresting (see above), but it’s also Bullock in one-woman-show mode, a mode at which she seriously excels. There’s some frustration in the fact that the premise of the monster plot never fully gets explained, and not in a satisfying “what you don’t see is scarier than what you do see” way, but while Bullock is on that river with those kids, the movie works very effectively.

Our Call: A qualified Stream It for general audiences. A raving, enthusiastic Stream It for Sandra Bullock fans.

Stream Bird Box on Netflix