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‘Bird Box’ is Engaging and Refreshing: A Review

Sandra Bullock and Sarah Paulson star in the new Netflix thriller Bird Box. Alongside a solid supporting cast that includes John Malkovich, B.D Wong, Machine Gun Kelly, Danielle Macdonald, Trevante Rhodes, Rosa Salazar, Lil Rel Howery and Jacki Weaver. Directed by Academy Award-Winning director Susanne Bier (Best known for In A Better World and AMC’s The Night Manager). The film is inspired by the novel Bird Box written by Josh Malerman.

Bird Box is equally a psychological thriller as is the book. Bier takes us on a two-timeline journey following Malorie’s (played by Sandra Bullock) journey surviving in a dystopian world. The film dives right into the story beginning with an ominous look at Malorie and two children (played by Vivien Lyra Blair and Julian Edwards) navigating blindfolded through an eerie trek. Next we are taken to five years prior where the film explains how this post-apocalyptic world began.

Unlike most dramatic irony Hollywood films, Bird Box allows the audience to figure out what is happening alongside the characters. This is refreshing as it keeps the ever-present factor that we don’t know what’s going to happen. When we are brought to five years prior in the timeline the film wastes no time in getting to action and bringing us right to how the world collapses around Malorie and introducing us to the rest of the cast. A good portion of the film is watching the interaction of nine strangers stuck in a house figuring out how to survive what’s happening around them outside. John Malkovich plays an untrusting, pessimist character with a rather unconventional comedic side that just adds to the film in such a great way. Both him and Lil Rel Howery (best known for Get Out) are great supporting characters because they both bring a comedic aspect everyone didn’t know they needed in a life-death situation.

It would be questionable not to feel a comparison of John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place which had great success in the box office this past April. With similar themes however, the premise of both films are different. A Quiet Place introduced us into a new style of psychological thriller not being able to make noise to survive and Bird Box takes it to another level taking away our most important of our five senses, vision. Unlike, A Quiet Place with Bird Box we are never actually given a physical creature on screen. Instead we are left to our own imagination to what this force is, based on how it manipulates the minds of those who see it. The force drives people to commit suicide the quickest way near them and throughout the film we see that just being blindfolded isn’t necessarily the guaranteed method of survival. I have to also add the suicide factor definitely gave me 2008’s The Happening (starring Mark Wahlberg) vibes.

If you enjoyed A Quiet Place, then you will surely enjoy Bird Box. It’s a refreshing film that keeps you engaged throughout with chilling scenes and a sometimes comedic yet interesting to watch ensemble cast. Catch it out now on Netflix and select theaters.