Bird Box

The American movie Bird Box, an original Netflix production, is a good horror movie. It is a very well-put-together horror movie with a pretty good ending that, although I admit I was not expecting it, seems pretty obvious after you first see it. Still, I could not shake the feeling that this was something I had seen before in A Quiet Place, and that movie got to me a bit more than this. (10/02/2019)

A similarly conceived atmospheric group survival like A Quiet Place, or the slightly more pompous and louder World War Z, two films dealing with a global apocalypse and the initial inability to locate why, or even how to defend oneself. Unlike its competitors, Bird Box doesn't go the route of flashy kills or massive shots of tons of dead bodies. Instead, it plays an interesting game between a group of people, led by the initially slightly controversial mother Sandra Bullock, and an invisible evil. It's a film that surprisingly isn't about being out there, and to make that very clear, it's very slow and hard to find out what's actually going on. Instead, Susanne BIer plays a rather sophisticated and entertaining game about the fact that the absolutely key clue to victory is family cohesion, dreams and the will to go on no matter what. All this in a non-pathetic, light and perhaps even "fun" way that does not outright bring pain. I would ignore the experts who will bitterly complain that they didn't get the explanation they needed. There's an abundance of it, it can be taken at any time, you just need to watch carefully, because sometimes the greatest danger may not be visible at first sight. (02/17/2019)

For me, on the same level of A Quiet Place (which I actually liked a little bit less than the average rating would suggest), though it also has some passages that will make a sane viewer facepalm. The behaviour of the characters doesn’t correspond to what would be sensible a given situation (can anyone explain me why nobody paid attention to the guy who in the flashback was experimenting with cameras around the house?). Taken as a whole, however, it’s professionally put together, with solid performances and direction. But expecting a masterpiece would be a mistake. (12/16/2018)

I liked it a little more than A Quiet Place, because this film started, continued and ended with a intimate-depressing atmosphere, and never drifted towards action scenes at all costs. Moreover, the evil that was causing all this was even more mysterious, unknown the entire time and thus more interesting. That's great. And the scene with the car ride to the supermarket was truly superb. (01/05/2019)

Anyone could admit  that it is only a facsimile of A Quiet Place, however, Bird Box cannot be denied its own merit and the fact that it goes off in a different direction. From a technical and acting point of view, it is a great achievement (I think that more time and space could have been given to John Malkovich’s character especially, I would have appreciated that). However, the retrospective narration was painful - and, because of it, you could predict how the movie would turn out from the beginning concerning most of the characters, so there are no real surprises when something really bad happens. The audience is thus unnecessarily deprived of suspense, and it is impossible to generate an emotional connection with the characters from the start, which is a great shame with this type of movie. Also, perhaps only those with the sunniest of dispositions could have actually believed the ending. (01/11/2019)