Engaging and entertaining, if never quite fulfilling its potential despite Sandra Bullock's excellent performance

Rating: 7/10 (19 February 2019)

There's been some strong opinions expressed about this film; the heat around it seems to have been ratcheted up by Netflix telling us it's their most viewed original release, equivalent to massive box office had it been given a cinematic release. I also can't help but feel some of the online vitriol would have been lesser had it not been both directed by and starred women. Either way, it comes as little surprise to discover that it's not as bad as some of the hate directed towards it suggests. It doesn't benefit from thematic and plot similarities with the superior A Quiet Place. It's set in a - you guessed it - dystopian future where a glimpse of ... something we never see ... leads the individual who sees it to immediately commit suicide. The film takes place in two different time streams - one in the immediate aftermath of the crisis hitting one city, in which the pregnant Sandra Bullock is caught up. The other is five years on, with that same mother and two children (named 'Boy' and 'Girl') attempting to make their way on a raft down a river to a possible safe haven. It's never less than engaging, and Sandra Bullock is superb as she channels a potent cocktail of spoken and unspoken paranoia, fear, insecurity and maternal feelings into a race for survival. There are false notes - John Malkovich is either badly miscast or very badly written (probably both) as a grumpy survivor of the initial crisis. In that same time frame, the dystopian trope of whether incomers to the group should be trusted is never convincingly handled. On the plus side, one of those outsiders is Tom Holland, an actor capable of great complexity and always one I relish watching; his part is engagingly handled. The main weakness is, though, that the film can't quite decide what it wants to be: a horror-thriller, a film for adults, a film accessible to children, a film about family and specifically motherhood, a survival thriller, a reflection on our fear of mental health issues ... or more. It takes no central decision, so several thematic threads are frustratingly left hanging; the outstanding, leaner A Quiet Place settled on the horror-thriller format and in doing so found profound expression for its themes, even given a shorted running time. As a result, Bird Box's emotional pay off at the end doesn't quite take flight, and the film's titular metaphor feels clumsy. But still; I was never bored, and Sandra Bullock's performance is worth it on its own.