Seriously, I wanted to like this movie, I really did. I will admit, there are some good things, like the acting and the premise. The acting is honestly really on point and they can make some extremely clunky dialogue sound pretty okay. I also really like the concept and the consistency the film maintains with their rules about the monsters and what happens if you look at them. It reminds me a lot of a twilight zone episode and I really like that.

Now that I’ve gotten the stuff I like out of the way, here we go.

This movie tries so hard to be the next “A Quiet Place” but undoubtedly fails to live up to that quality of film on almost every level. Although it had a cool premise, it was bogged down by some really uninteresting and really, really pointless characters. Many of the characters throughout the movie make decisions based off impulse and it feels as if much of the development of the movie is based off actions that don’t fit a realistic narrative.  

A disappointing part of the movie is the score, mostly because of my high hopes. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are both extremely talented musicians and composers, scoring “The Social Network”, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “Gone Girl”, some seriously good films with extremely solid soundtracks; the difference is that these movies took the time and care to feature their scores, giving them moments and whole scenes to explore the sound and emotion of the music. With “Bird Box”, the music merely exists. The movie went from scene-to-scene, not letting the actors or the audience rest in a moment and just live in the film. It’s beyond disappointing that such gifted composers were severely underused and not given the spotlight they deserve.

Another big issue is the two timelines; if we’re already shown what happens to everyone in the future, there’s no reason to be emotionally invested in the characters from the past who we know from the get-go will and won’t make it. It destroys tension and attachment, which are essential for a horror movie.

One of the most ridiculous parts of the movie, by far, is the boat journey which takes up a majority of the film. I liked the idea of it, except the fact that it’s all impossible. Have you ever tried swimming, let alone rowing, blind? And the fact their journey on the rapids spans 2 days, it is 100% impossible for any of the characters to survive.

Another big thing that separates “Bird Box” from “A Quiet Place”, a genuinely great film, is the editing. “A Quiet Place” is shot like a high-budget, artfully-made film; “Bird Box”, on the other hand, looks like a TV-movie. Nothing innovative came out of the filmmaking and it left no unique spin on the genre. It’s obvious which film was made by a movie studio and which one was made by Netflix, purely out of quality.

“Bird Box” tries so hard to be like “A Quiet Place” but becomes a reboot of “The Happening” a movie eerily similar in plot and stupidity. Sandra Bullock and the rest of the cast are doing everything they can to give a cool idea some life, but the plot and the editing of the movie stop it from being considered good.