Bird Box

The last time San­dra Bul­lock made a thriller, we end­ed up with 2007 howler Pre­mo­ni­tion. Since then she’s won an Oscar, a Razz­ie, and turned her hand to a num­ber of fair­ly decent projects. So if ever there was a time for her to give the genre anoth­er shot, it’s sure­ly now. Bird Box sig­nals a nice change of pace and gifts Bul­lock with a role she’s able to real­ly sink her teeth into. It’s a shame, then, that the sto­ry itself just can’t keep up with her.

The film sees Bul­lock take on the role of Mal­o­rie Shan­non, a heav­i­ly-preg­nant artist who finds her­self caught up in the chaos of a glob­al event which caus­es vio­lent mass sui­cides. Join­ing with a group of sur­vivors, Mal­o­rie is forced to make some dif­fi­cult deci­sions and change her own hard-nosed nature in order to ensure sur­vival in an increas­ing­ly sin­is­ter climate.

Com­par­isons between Bird Box and 2018’s ear­li­er sense-based thriller, A Qui­et Place. seem inevitable, giv­en that the for­mer deprives its char­ac­ters of their sight, the lat­ter their speech. The idea of tak­ing away these basic com­mu­nica­tive facets is intrigu­ing, but just as A Qui­et Place left audi­ences pok­ing at some rather obvi­ous plot holes, so too does Bird Box. There’s a sense that something’s miss­ing from the sto­ry, with broad strokes used to paint every char­ac­ter with the excep­tion of Bullock.

John Malkovich seems to be hav­ing a blast as a can­tan­ker­ous fogey who Mal­o­rie encoun­ters, and Tre­vante Rhodes does well with an under­writ­ten sup­port­ing role, but the whole sto­ry rides on Bullock’s per­for­mance, and to her cred­it, she pulls it off. Even so, the rest of the film feels half-heart­ed and gener­ic, pieced togeth­er from the likes of M Night Shyamalan’s The Hap­pen­ing and just about every zom­bie movie ever.

The premise might be intrigu­ing – and Bier doesn’t pull any punch­es when it comes to gore – but there’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly fresh or excit­ing about Bird Box to hold your atten­tion, and it’s liable to be for­got­ten com­plete­ly after the cred­its roll.