Befor
I will admit, I didn’t even know this movie existed until a month ago. Shoot, I didn’t know that this movie came out on Netflix last year. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a Bird Box challenge until a month ago. Yeah, that challenge sure lasted for more than a month. It took me this long to finally watch it, only because I didn’t care to watch it. I even saw this just to have an excuse to have a worst of 2019. Now this is probably going to make the only worst movie that I watched from 2018! I know that I’m only guessing that this movie is going to suck without even watching it, but so far, the news for this movie is mostly negative, and the Netflix movies from the past few years have not been good lately. I mean, who the hell remembers Bright, or the oh so lovable, and hugable Death Note?
I can see how this streaming site has now become the Steam of TV and movies, since it’s now starting to turn into a dumping ground for anything to be aired, and it’s not just movies either. Even the majority of the Marvel series that got publicity from the audience just got gutted out into cancellation. Even Lost in Space, a show that is so bad that I’m embarrassed to admit that I saw the pilot for that turd. Hell, I didn’t even write my First Thoughts on the show because I forgot that I even saw it. This isn’t to say that there isn’t any good original shows from Netflix either. Shows like The Punisher, Jessica Jones, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Stranger Things are good examples of good shows. Even when it comes to original movies, Netflix can prove that they can release a good movie. I even dare say that the live-action Bleach movie that came out last year is probably, by far (fingers crossed for Alita: Battle Angel) the best when you compare to the other live-action anime movies of the past.
So, with that all being said, let me find out how this movie turns out for me.
After
After seeing this movie, I can’t say that it is a torture to sit through, but there is a reason for why no one is doing the Bird Box challenge anymore, or even talking about this movie for that matter. The biggest, sole reason for it is because this movie is forgettable. It has a lazy script, the dialog is half of the time terrible, and most of the time, I couldn’t help but wonder if the book (which I didn’t know this movie was based off of) was better or not. I don’t know if I’m going to remember any of the movie, and I hope that my notes will help with this writing process. Not even that, but I now can care less of writing this review, and I don’t know if you’re going to care about what I’m about to write either. But then again, that DOES express what I feel about this movie. Here we go!
This movie starts off what is suppose to be the film’s present day, with Sandra Bullock warning her children about the safeties of not looking outside. But for most of the movie, it keeps flashing back to five years previously, starting with her and her room mate, played by Emily Blunt. She is so bad in this movie, that she is trying her hardest not to slip up in her British accent, and failing anyways. I find this ironic, given the fact that she was able to pull it off really well in A Quiet Place, which did have a similar rule in this movie, but I will get to that later. And at this point, Sandra’s character, named Melanie, is pregnant, and she sees that people are committing suicide like crazy. …almost like another movie. …..just like the one that came out ten years before this one. But unlike The Happening, where the dialog was unintentionally comedic that you couldn’t help but laugh, as well as having the trees being the main culprit, this movie shows the event as over the top, the dialog and acting is cringe worthy, and the characters are, for the most part, predictable as to the traits that they are given. And speaking of which, let’s get to the other characters of this movie.
for the first third of this movie, it’s based off in a gay architect’s house who ends up dying from trying to see this thing from his camera system. You have John Malkovich, who is the jerk of this movie, as well as being paranoid, then you have Charlie, who is the cowardly fat, black guy from the Transformers movies, an old lady, who’s just an old lady. She was really pointless, as well as the other characters that I will list. The other two I will list are the drug attic and the cute, lil’ police academy student. These two are so stupidly in love with each other that they stupidly drive away in their all new Jeep car that has sensors on indicating if they’re about to physically get into contact with a physical object, with painted windows and taped cameras. And they did this on their own, knowing how dangerous it is outside! I’m not kidding! And the only ones that I didn’t leave out were the pregnant girl who comes in a few minutes into the movie, and the male protagonist/love interest for Sandra Bullock.
As you already know, this movie has a thing that you cannot see outside of a confined space, or even see what’s outside, or it will get you. What exactly is it that will get you? Who knows, and who cares. This movie sure doesn’t care at all as to what it is, nor am I sure if it knows how this whole thing works. It starts off as being basic, which is if you see the outside world, then you get this thing (disease, possession, pick whatever the hell it is) that causes you to commit suicide. Pretty straight forward, but then it raises more vague things about this …epidemic, or whatever this is, like some people are possessed to the point that they become mind controlled. Almost like in The Host. But I can’t believe I am saying this, but The Host was better at this because we knew what was controlling people’s minds and bodies, because we were given an explanation. And then you see this thing move around by them moving at a fast pace in the forest chasing Melanie and her two children, but were never able to catch up. Not gonna lie, that’s pretty weak. The thing that I don’t understand about these powers or what this thing is that takes a hold of people is if you can control people and make them your own as if you can make your own master race, then why do you want to take control of them and have them commit suicide? I am dead serious, we are given little to jack squat as to how anything about this thing even works!
Like I said, I never read the book. I don’t know if the book’s description is any better, but I have problems with adaptations too! You see here, I am aware that adaptations do have their own limitations for various reasons, such as run times, budget reasons, hard to display for limited capabilities or just out of dumb interpretations. But no matter what the reasoning behind it’s problems is, you cannot say some dumb stuff like “if only you read the book,” or “that’s why you have to read the book.” I mean, how is any of that going to make your movie work? Because you need to understand that the damage is already done. That’s like saying that I built a desk with drawers that have no handles to open those drawers, and the blueprints for the design of the drawers have handles on them, and you still struggle to open them. And then you have someone who reads the blueprints, and tells you that you struggle to open the drawers, but then says “that’s why you have to read the blueprints, because that tells you that the handles are suppose to be there and that’s how you open the drawers on this desk.” You would look ridiculous if you said such a thing! And that’s how I feel about this whole analogy. If that’s not good enough for you, then allow me to demonstrate with a well-known, dear beloved movie to many, but myself. I know people are going to kill me for this. My biggest problem with Akira was it’s story. Given what we got, we were thrown in our faces information that comes out of nowhere, such as the anti-government movement, the Akira-religious cult, so on, and so on. I even heard people who try to defend it’s story by saying, “you have to read the manga.” No I don’t. This isn’t suppose to be some kind of test where I need to take some time to read the source material before hand. Not saying that you can’t do that, but in good writing, you shouldn’t. And in good writing, your movie shouldn’t have this problem either. And that’s what I feel that this movie has.
But regardless, even if this movie’s story was well adapted, it still wouldn’t be any good. The written dialog in the first 3/4 of the movie is lazy to where people are trying to let us know that they’re living in the end of the world, or that they’re referencing that John Malkovich’s character is an A-hole (no, I refuse to spell that whole word out). You don’t get to know most of these characters all too well, other than the fact that they’re paranoid. When it’s in the movie’s present day, it keeps trying to remind us of how long Melanie and her children have been on the boat that they are on most of the time to reach to their destination that they’re trying to get to. But why do we need to know how long they’ve been on the boat anyway? That’s like if The Walking Dead just gives us a time as to how long it has been in each and every single moment in every episode, but given no reason as to why. And as for Melanie’s children that she’s trying to take care of, she doesn’t even give them names until the very end of the movie. She just keeps calling them boy or girl. She claims that she cares for them so much that she doesn’t even think that giving them names is important. And you know what? I don’t get what the point of that was anyway. The other thing that I find pointless is that the kids are not allowed to know about the past. I don’t get why Melanie even bothers not to let them know about something as harmless as that. And the movie is called Bird Box, just because Melanie walks around with a box with three birds that she so happens to find still alive in the product placement store- I mean the supermarket. She uses them to guide her as to whether or not if danger approaches from those who are, uh, infected? But to put the shriveled up cherry on top of the diarrhea sundae, the birds were released in the end of the movie, in it’s awe and glorious terrible CGI form. Like the bird from A Bug’s Life looked more realistic than those birds, and I’m talking about the bird that was made out of sticks and leaves.
Now, this movie does have some similar things from A Quiet Place, but this just isn’t anywhere near to being that good. The reason for why A Quiet Place worked really well is because you have a plot device that wasn’t vague, explained very well, didn’t over complicate anything, and with the little amount of dialog that was given, it was good. As a matter of fact, it was pretty scary, because you knew why it was scary. It even has characters who weren’t one-noted and you cared for them as much as they cared for each other! That movie was also written and directed from John Krasinski, who has never written or directed a movie in his entire life, which still blows my mind to this day. Bird Box, on the other hand, wasn’t suspenseful, wasn’t scary, and the sole reasons were due to a horrible script, horrible characters, mostly horrible acting, and a plot device that I don’t know if either the writers or the director cared to put too much thought into trying to make sense out of.
Now, even though I have made this movie look terrible, and it is, it’s still the least worst out of the past Netflix movies I have reviewed. It isn’t as offensive of a betrayal as Death Note was, and it wasn’t as overtly preachy or terrible as Bright was either. Like I said, as bad as Bird Box got, it is really forgettable. I don’t or won’t ever see or hear anyone talk about this film in months from now, and I don’t think that there was any point to watching this movie either. This movie is just pointless for anyone to watch, which is why I don’t recommend this movie at all. It’s pointless. I feel like I wasted my time over this, and I feel as if I wasted your time reading this as well if you made it this far. I’m really sorry if you did make it this far. That’s it! It’s over, and I will hit the sack for tonight!
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