Movie Review--Bird Box

". . . in the end, there are two types of people.  The assholes and the dead."

--Douglass, Bird Box

Netflix has created multiple horror films that stand above plenty of other contemporary entries in the genre, including Gerald's Game and Into the Tall Grass.  With Bird Box, Netflix adapted a book other than one by Stephen King, delving into very mild cosmic horror in a story about unseen creatures that have the power to reduce people to acts of suicide or aggression against others.  There are even images and a cult reminiscent of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.  Anything that exists is part of the metaphysics of reality, from the most fundamental truths (logical axioms) to the smallest particle to the most exotic being (like the uncaused cause or whatever other grand entities might exist), but the invisible creatures of Bird Box are more explicitly metaphysical in that their "abnormal" nature influences humans who see them like the eldritch beings of traditional cosmic horror.  Their ability to drive people to kill themselves hinges directly on their metaphysical nature.  Female director Susanne Bier manages to pursue these themes enough that their shadow falls over the film, ironically, without some of the deeper substance behind the subgenre making itself visible.

Production Values

The premise of Bird Box involves a somewhat abstract kind of horror, but the fact that the creatures are invisible until seen by individual people eliminates the need for plenty of CGI up front.  This frees most scenes to stand on practical effects and acting.  Since the creatures are actually used to a very limited extent, it falls to the performances to carry the film through its many indoor scenes.  Sandra Bullock and horror veteran Sarah Paulson play sisters, only one of which survives the initial introduction to the monsters.  Sandra Bullock's Malorie is the primary character, and her relationships with fellow survivor Tom and her eventual child form the core of her characterization.  Sandra ensures that every scene of hers is marked with strong acting.  Rosa Salazar (Alita: Battle Angel), John Malkovich (Beowulf), and BD Wong (Jurassic Park and Jurassic World) have their own secondary characters, though only John Malkovich has more than a small handful of scenes out of the three.  His talent shows itself in his character's jaded, tormented, and even perhaps conflicted attitude towards life.  He may not have had as much screen time as Sandra Bullock, but he distinguishes himself as one of the most skilled actors in the movie.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Mysterious sightings of otherwise invisible entities inspire worldwide suicides and mass panic, and the sudden unseen appearance of the creatures in America forces pregnant Malorie Hayes to take refuge in a house of strangers with an aspiring author, a police trainee, and a handful of other people.  The group must adapt to the new threat by covering their eyes when outside and covering windows while in their home or car.  Malorie, after taking a cage with two birds at a supermarket, unintentionally discovers that birds can sense when the entities are near.  Years later, Malorie leads two young children in a desperate exodus to safety.

Intellectual Content

An early conversation has a character declare that a category of figures comparable to those of different religions are rooted in facts instead of "bullshit," as another character insists.  Whether the creatures were vaguely encountered by the adherents of any particular philosophy/religion is never addressed, but the aforementioned character's insistence that the presence of the creatures in various ideologies reflects reality rather than fiction at least briefly touches upon how all truths and things in existence, no matter how trivial or grand they might be, are part of reality.  There is no such thing as multiple realities or a reality outside of reality, as some idiotic Christians, scientists, and others might pretend; all things that are true are just different aspects of the same all-encompassing reality, no matter how diverse their metaphysical differences are.  Issues like this and the metaphysical and epistemological nature of invisible beings are ultimately sidestepped in favor of exploring the kinds of moral dilemmas that confront people in times of crisis, and Malorie does actually change her stance towards certain moral and practical approaches to survival as time goes on.

Conclusion

For all of its well-acted characters, Bird Box could have done far more to embrace both its general horror elements and the pseudo-Lovecraftian philosophical type of horror it occasionally reaches for.  It still grasps at the existential terror of moral difficulties, longings for survival, and epistemological uncertainty, but the potentially eldritch nature of the invisible creatures and the ideological blindness of the admiring cult actually play only a small role in the overall story.  The projected sequel film based on the second book in the series, entitled Malorie, has the chance to correct some of the squandered opportunities of Bird Box for greater thematic depth and the unraveling of the mystery around the creatures, but at least the first film does not waste all of its opportunities to form a serviceable story of apocalyptic chaos.

Content:
1.  Violence:  A woman steps in front of a moving vehicle to kill herself.  Offscreen and onscreen killings occur, some involving guns.
2.  Profanity:  "Fuck" is used multiple times in the first 15 minutes alone.  "Shit" is exclaimed later on.
3.  Sexuality:  A woman and man are accidentally seen having sex while naked for a very brief time.