Birdbox

If you have social media or listen to the radio you will of heard of the film Birdbox which has rose to fame in a matter of days and is now topic of conversation in entertainment news.

Last night I watched the film birdbox as I was recommended it by a friend, as well as seeing lots of hype about it on twitter which isn’t uncommon for a Netflix production. Said to have had over 45million Netflix accounts watch the film in its first 7 days of release, the best ratings yet for a Netflix film. I would definitely say this amount of viewers was due to the talk on social media about it creating a stir and publicity, this curiosity of what everyone was talking about is one of the main reasons people watch it, the same reason I did.

The film Birdbox is about a mum (Sandra Bullock) and two children who go on a dangerous journey through the forest and down a river in order to try and escape to a safe community in a somewhat post-apocalyptic world after an outbreak of supernatural beings/entities force people to commit suicide when looking at them, killing most of the population. Therefore, any initial survivors use blindfolds when going outside/ unknown places so that they don’t see anything and hopefully stay alive. However, they also must avoid the people who are infected but mad, they can survive seeing these beings and force unaffected humans to look at them also.
It’s called Birdbox as in the film there are two birds kept in a box which they keep with them as the birds get riled up when an entity is near, like a warning sign.

In the end they make it to the community which is a school for the blind, as they wouldn’t be able to see these beings they are all unaffected, however, apparently in the novel the ending is less pleasant and the community is full of people who have made themselves go blind so that they will never see them, however the director wanted a happier and more optimistic ending for the film.

A big theme behind the film is clearly suicide, said to be bringing attention to the high suicide rates in America, however I’m not sure this message is portrayed as positively as intended as it’s portrayed in extreme and gory scenarios which may be a bit insensitive to people who struggle with mental illness’ and similar thoughts.

To conclude: I thought the film was quite good, however it started to lose the story towards the end and I thought the ending was a bit weird and could’ve maybe been improved, It reminded me of the film ‘A quiet place’, however I thought that film was slightly better.