Rip-off or Revolutionary?

Rating: 5/10 (13 March 2019)

For a period of time, memes featuring blindfolded individuals have been running rampant across the internet. The humour this film has garnered is ironic compared to the serious yet somewhat predictable storyline consisting mainly of an invisible monster(s) that runs rife and drives people insane by simply being seen. Regardless, Netflix has strained to make Josh Malerman's book into some enthralling, original film that simply falls flat.
In essence the film is about our pregnant protagonist (Malorie) who watches the world collapse as an epidemic emerges and people spontaneously decide to kill themselves. Amidst the chaos that unfolds, she watches the death of her sister and finds herself with a group of vastly different characters in a mansion. Together, they hypothesise that there must be something outside that corrupts people's minds and forces them to commit suicide. As the days become weeks and weeks become months, the herd has thinned and Malorie is in charge of a small family who must occasionally venture out into the desolate cities to find resources - blindfolded. Sound familiar? You wouldn't be wrong to understand why many claim this plot is awfully similar to A Quiet Place which was another hugely successful film and consisted of our characters being stripped of a sense (speaking) and forced to survive as a family.
The story tells two tales simultaneously, as in it switches from present time and how Malorie ended up in the position she is in. As the story progress the two timelines match very seamlessly and parallels between both timelines are executed cleverly. This gives the opportunity to introduce dilemmas in one timeline which the other resolves and adds a layer of intrigue and tension.
But the storyline feels very formulaic at times, yes it has the occasional "twists" or "turns" with new "unexpected" threats. In fact, my cousin and I concluded that the survivors would be the blind during the first half of the film - and we were spot on. It makes an effort to try and stand out but the introduction of some evil people who were miraculously immune to this epidemic was not surprising and reminiscent of The Walking Dead (you'll get what I mean if you watch it).
Personally, I find it frustrating that the monster is never revealed but by keeping this a secret is a double-edged sword; it digresses from the typical "scary monster" genre and keeps the viewer rapt. On the contrary, it becomes mildly ridiculous watching grown adults sprinting away from a gust of wind that scatters leaves - that is often how the creature is portrayed. Although films with the absence of an antagonist (or monster) is uncommon, Bird Box has used little imagination to illustrate its existence and the memory of A Quiet Place is too fresh in our minds. However, it is not impossible to have a frightening creature that is rarely seen, as depicted by The Thing.
Despite the fact that Bird Box seems to have taken scraps of ideas from a variety of very successful films, it remains a wild mashup of other films whose standards it desperately tries to match. The film itself is generic with little to nothing which is particularly new or original, however it has some faintly creative and unorthodox aspects - but that may not necessarily mean it is a masterpiece. It is easily forgettable and perhaps the memes will outlast the film at this rate.