Spoiler free review.
Not everyone is pleased about Netflix creating their own movies for the platform but when it comes to Bird Box, you have to hand it to the streaming giants – they know how to make a good film.
The feature begins with Sandra Bullock instructing two small children to listen to her every word and keep their blindfolds on at all costs. “If you remove your blindfolds, you will die,” she firmly tells them. They then blindly make their way to the river where they embark on a journey by boat, but we have no idea why or where they are going.
One of the entertaining things about Bird Box is that it doesn’t beat around the bush. Within the first fifteen minutes, we know enough about our characters to empathize with them and we can see that the end is pretty damn nigh. There’s graphic violence, mass suicides, and extreme chaos and we have absolutely no idea what’s going on. All we know is that there is some kind of entity spreading through the planet and if you look at it, it will make you kill yourself. In terms of what the entity is and how it spread, we don’t receive any answers other than a vague explanation from a supermarket worker who once read some conspiracy theory on the internet.
Although some will likely find themselves frustrated by the film’s lack of answers, by leaving the questions dangling, the viewer becomes emerged in the sense of confusion and desperation that runs throughout the feature. There is no time for the characters to ask questions or look for answers because all Malorie (Sandra Bullock) and her new housemates can ever do now is survive. We become invested in their journey and the only question we can really ask is the question that Toms proposes regarding the difference between staying alive and living. For Malorie, the later becomes lost in her bid for the former.
Admirably, Bird Box continues to stay gripping and exciting throughout. Scenes such as the blind car journey and the boat ride through the rapids will have you on the edge of your seat. It becomes obvious from the start that all characters are expendable and that more and more complications will always present themselves. There will never be space to relax or entertain fantasies of a better life because, at the end of the world, everyone has an expiry date.
Bird Box seems to be receiving mixed reviews from critics but as far as we are concerned at OMG Check It Out, Netflix’s latest original feature has given us faith in the streaming platform’s movie making abilities.
Gripping, exciting and uncomfortably tense, Bird Box is a terrifying tale not just of the world’s end, but of what happens after.
4.5/5
