Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
I don’t think I’d ever really given any thought to the major studio’s various sub-brands for different types of movie, but I’m starting to see some sense in it. Mainly because seeing “Netflix” at the start of a film is a total dice roll on the style and quality of what you’ll land on. It was ever so, I suppose, but having the same logo so prominently attached (either as producer or distributor) to some of the most enjoyable and/or interesting films of last year (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, The Other Side of the Wind, Roma) and some of the least (Apostle, Mute, The Cloverfield Paradox) gives the company a weird brand non-identity.
To that end, we can add Bird Box to their reckoning sheet, a horror film starring Sandra Bullock, which may perhaps be all the review necessary. An unexplained malady quickly takes hold of the world, we come to later understand somehow transmitted through sight, that causes people to commit suicide as swiftly as possible, causing all manner of inconvenience.
Escaping the chaos through blind luck, hohohodoyouseewhatIdidthere, Bullock’s heavily pregnant Malorie winds up sheltering in the home of John Malkovich’s splendidly irritable Douglas, alongside a variety of characters ranging from “person I can barely remember” to “other person that made no impact on me” as they try and figure out what’s going on, and how they can survive it.
All this is intercut with a Malorie of five years hence preparing for and undertaking a dangerous river journey with two kids to a supposed safe haven as a desperate last gambit for survival, which must be made blindfolded to prevent whatever possibly demonic force is causing this from infecting them.
So, it’s basically landing somewhere between A Quiet Place and The Happening, both of which we hold in rather low regard, and this is perhaps worse than either of them. There’s such a huge believability hurdle to get over with the infection, whatever you want to call it, that I just can’t bring myself to get over. It’s playing the “not explaining anything” card to attempt to create an air of mystery, but there’s just nothing in the rest of the film to provide any interest, unlike, say Pontypool, which could be open to the same criticism but is a far more interestingly executed film.
It’s well enough acted and shot, but nothing that’s being said or done is anything remotely interesting or that hasn’t been done a million times before, bar, perhaps from a few blindfolded camera shots, which as done infrequently enough that they seem silly rather than a way to empathise with Malorie’s predicament. There’s probably a really interesting VR game in here, just not, sadly, a film.
Add to this a wildly misjudged, insensitive development regarding this affliction’s effect on the mentally ill, and it’s hard to find much to recommend at all in here. So I won’t. Make best endeavours to avoid.