Bird Box | Film Review

Hey Guys x

Welcome to my first post of 2019 - I hope you had a great Christmas/New Years celebration!

So, for my first review of the year, I thought I'd start with a film that everyone has been talking about lately, and that's Bird Box - one of the latest Netflix originals.

The film is about an unknown entity that's causing people all over the world to kill themselves. But one thing is clear - if you see it, you die. After living behind the cover of a blindfold for 5 years, Malorie Hayes (Sandra Bullock) and her two children have to battle the outside world in order to get to safety. But with no one to turn to, nowhere safe in sight, and a group who will do whatever possible to make everyone look, can Malorie get herself and the children to safety before it's too late?

I enjoyed this film a lot.

It was categorised as a horror, which I don't think should be the case because the idea of living in this world is a lot more scary than the execution of the film, but it's certainly tense and suspenseful. There are moments when you as the audience don't want to look outside in your real life, because the themes of this film (safety, family, trust, responsibility) bleed into our real lives, just with a fantastical background.

The premise of the film has been compared to that of 'A Quiet Place', both in a positive and negative light. While the idea of one of the five senses being cut off to survive is a common theme, this is where the comparisons should end. While 'A Quiet Place' is directly reliant on the creatures that the family are hiding from, Bird Box offers a more psychological torment in the sense that the audience never see what the people who have been affected by this entity are seeing. This works to the advantage of the film, as it allows you to use your imagination to conjure up the scariest thing that you can personally think of.

The film was directed by Susanne Bier, also responsible for a number of amazing projects including 'The Night Manager', and she did a great job with this film. There was tension in exactly the right moments, and you are able to relate to these characters even though you'll never be in the same situation.

Having said this, as well as the film itself not being particularly scary, the ambiguous ending was extremely frustrating. When the film is finished, you have a lot of questions that will probably never be answered, including what this entity was in the first place, and why some people weren't affected by it. While this doesn't take anything away from the film while watching it, it might make you not want to watch it again.

Overall, this film was a story about the way that people have to stick together in a time of crisis. It's a thriller that actually thrills, and there so many moments that make watching completely worth it. See this film!

7/10

Lou