Bird Box (2018)
Directed by Susanne Bier
Five years after an ominous unseen presence drives most of society to suicide, a survivor and her two children make a desperate bid to reach safety.
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30 films that influenced Bird Box
What critics say influenced Bird Box
Although it is publicly documented that Malerman completed the novel’s rough draft before the release of M. Night Shamalyan’s “The Happening” and the cinematic adaptation of “The Road,” the comparisons to both of these films, and any given post-apocalyptic movie released in the past several decades, cannot help but be drawn regardless.
Adapted from the 2014 post-apocalyptic novel of the same name by Josh Malerman, Bird Box is oddly similar to filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan’s terrible 2008 thriller The Happening.
We’ve seen this kind of post-apocalyptic tale before, and there are bits and pieces that will remind you of The Happening, The Road and A Quiet Place.
The mysterious, invisible force driving people to suicide recalls M. Night Shyamalan’s much-maligned The Happening .
Here, as in M. Night Shyamalan’s far worse “The Happening,” is a movie that deals with two simultaneous fears at once.
If you’ve seen any film where a mismatched group of survivors has to band together to understand and survive an unpredictable and ever growing extinction level event – from Night of the Living Dead to The Mist to The Happening to A Quiet Place – you’ll know every single thing that happens in Bird Box from the moment the plot kicks into gear, and no amount of great direction or nuanced performances will distract from the fact that this has all been done so many times before that I’ve lost count, and that it has been done a whole lot better.
There is good stuff to be found, including plenty of character beats (Lil Rel Howery plays a grocery store clerk whose research for his sci-fi novel makes him a comparative expert on the events) and a trip to the grocery store that will remind you of The Mist.
Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist seems to be a huge influence here, too – there’s even an entire sequence set inside a supermarket, as well as mention of one neighbor suing another over a property dispute – both of which feature prominently in Darabont’s flick.
A trip to the supermarket for supplies (they black out the windows of the car and rely on the GPS to navigate the route) results in a harrowing sequence that actually does echo a horror film based on a Stephen King book: “The Mist” (2007).
Se puede contar con una amenaza inasible en el cine de horror: como prueba está The Mist, a la que Bird Box también le debe, y cuya ejecución es superior en todos sentidos.
At least, that’s what should be frightening about the “Bird Box” premise, which author Josh Malerman hatched in novel form, where readers’ imaginations were free to fill in that unseen terror as they saw fit — a device that he may as well have lifted from Stephen King’s “The Mist” or José Saramago’s “Blindness.”
If you’ve seen any film where a mismatched group of survivors has to band together to understand and survive an unpredictable and ever growing extinction level event – from Night of the Living Dead to The Mist to The Happening to A Quiet Place – you’ll know every single thing that happens in Bird Box from the moment the plot kicks into gear, and no amount of great direction or nuanced performances will distract from the fact that this has all been done so many times before that I’ve lost count, and that it has been done a whole lot better.
We also never learn what's causing this to happen, which recalls the ambiguity in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds."
Five years earlier we will see just what has befallen civilization and why Malorie is taking such care of her "Bird Box." Danish director Susanne Bier ("After the Wedding") sets the stage for quite the conceptual thriller, dramatizing an apocalyptic event with such mounting horror Stephen King might grow green with envy.
But like much of the characterization found in this movie from the Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier (“After the Wedding”), the horse-related theme is severely undercooked.
The Danish director, one of the few contemporary helmers who’s been able to play real-world melodrama as life-and-death horror (as she did so brilliantly in “Brothers” and “After the Wedding”), has yet to achieve the same trick in English.
What it’s about: Directed by Susanne Bier ( After the Wedding , In a Better World), Bird Box takes its name from a box of birds that Mallory carries with her on her journey, which she and the children — who are named Boy and Girl, for reasons that become clear later on — must undertake blindfolded to save their very lives.
Directed by Susanne Bier ( After the Wedding , AMC’s The Night Manager ) and adapted from Josh Malerman’s 2014 novel of the same name, Bird Box unfolds across two timelines: The first, in which Malorie (Sandra Bullock) attempts to shepherd Girl (Vivien Lyra Blair) and Boy (Julian Edwards) through a post-apocalyptic landscape — while all three are blindfolded; and the second, several years earlier, explaining the circumstances that led them to their journey in the first place.
La danesa Susanne Bier (In a Better World, After the Wedding) es la encargada de dirigir este intenso y efectivo thriller apocalíptico.
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As in this Dawn of the Dead-ass trope of tense survivors breathing down each other’s necks in a confined space?
The rag-tag band of survivors trapped in one place feels lifted directly from Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake.
The idea of not looking at something that could kill you is from any number of stories about boogeymen, and the large scale destruction of cities and towns is eerily reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later.
Meanwhile, the cliches multiply as Bird Box borrows and steals from the aforementioned deadly A Quiet Place, M. Night Shyamalan’s numbing The Happening, Dawn of the Dead, and others.
The Mist is arguably my favorite Stephen King adaptation, and I love Dawn of the Dead.
At least, that’s what should be frightening about the “Bird Box” premise, which author Josh Malerman hatched in novel form, where readers’ imaginations were free to fill in that unseen terror as they saw fit — a device that he may as well have lifted from Stephen King’s “The Mist” or José Saramago’s “Blindness.”
Viewers never see who or what they are, and their presence is represented by wind gusts and shadows (if you saw 1980's "The Watcher in the Woods," the technique will be familiar).
We’ve seen this kind of post-apocalyptic tale before, and there are bits and pieces that will remind you of The Happening, The Road and A Quiet Place.
Bird Box , a mix of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Jose Saramago’s Blindness , jumps between the present day—Malorie and co.
With hints of The Road, A Quiet Place and any number of zombie movies, this Netflix film is appreciably bleak but also sluggish, never fully fleshing out the themes at the story’s core.
Bullock convincingly transforms herself into a gritty survivalist in Susanne Bier ’s gripping thriller, which brings to mind everything from “The Road” to “The Happening” as it carves a space for itself in the post-apocalyptic canon.
Although it is publicly documented that Malerman completed the novel’s rough draft before the release of M. Night Shamalyan’s “The Happening” and the cinematic adaptation of “The Road,” the comparisons to both of these films, and any given post-apocalyptic movie released in the past several decades, cannot help but be drawn regardless.
I was equally worried that it would be one of those downer-apocalypse movies like Children of Men or The Road (as opposed to exciting-apocalypse movies such as I Am Legend or World War Z).
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Unlike a Night Of The Living Dead, Bird Box doesn’t generate much claustrophobic dread during its flashbacks as the cooped-up characters try to decide what to do next.
If you’ve seen any film where a mismatched group of survivors has to band together to understand and survive an unpredictable and ever growing extinction level event – from Night of the Living Dead to The Mist to The Happening to A Quiet Place – you’ll know every single thing that happens in Bird Box from the moment the plot kicks into gear, and no amount of great direction or nuanced performances will distract from the fact that this has all been done so many times before that I’ve lost count, and that it has been done a whole lot better.
In the short time that they retain TV service, they learn that what's happening locally is also occurring globally, so they're trapped and must brace for an onslaught of zombies or whatever they are, just like the characters in Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
Movies like Indecent Proposal (1993), Ransom (1996), and Phone Booth (2002)?