Good for memes. Bad for movies.

Rating: 3/10 (12 January 2019)

The beginning of M. Night Shyamalan's infamously despised The Happening gave us a promising premise about people mysteriously committing mass suicide. The rest of the movie is a slog of non-suspense, but that initial idea was a decently Hitchcockian. Bird Box does it's best to pick up that seed-of-a-concept and run with it, at times managing slight engagement through momentary struggles. Mostly though, all it manages is making me wish I had a blindfold on myself to keep from having to witness more Happening-esque levels of cinematically boring stupidity.
Like Night of the Living Dead (only much worse), Bird Box is largely interested in the individual toll of a worldwide disaster. Instead of buckets of blood and gory terror, it focuses on the smaller thrills. Unfortunately, it rarely succeeds, continuing Bullock's sad career trend of being in technically popular but undeniably subpar projects (Minions, Ocean's 8, Blindside). The rest of the impressive cast, who all deserve much better, are sequestered within didactic exposition, atrocious flashback storytelling, oddly lit Sharknado-looking cinematography, and good-old-fashioned overlength.
If nothing else, this proves the undeniable impact Netflix has on our collective viewing habits. If we had to get dressed, go outside, drive our gas-guzzling car, spend $30+, and sit through 20 minutes of trailers, Bird Box would be just another non-existent 2018 horror movie (Strangers 2, Truth or Dare, Slenderman). But because Netflix spits it right into our living rooms, we don't even have to put on pants to watch Sandra lovingly yell at her kids to, "NOT LOOK!" for two hours. Need we not forget, though, that true thrills come from creative tension and natural stakes, not just mysterious noises and random violence.