Severely underwhelming

Rating: 6/10 (23 January 2019)

A movie in shambles, Bird Box is the prime example of aiming high and falling short. Despite having a good premise, the movie never seemed to take off.
Starting off with a woman telling her two kids that they are going to row down a river blindfolded and they are to not open their eyes under any circumstance, the movie then cut back and forth between this journey and a series of events revolving around a group of people (the aforementioned woman included) inside a suburban house after an unknown supernatural force made anyone who looks at it either commits suicide or turns into fanatic. Up until this point, Bird Box seems like an interesting mix of A Quite Place and The Walking Dead. Unfortunately, before any of the supporting characters in this group was able to shine, the majority of them either died rather meaningless deaths or simply ran away and disappeared altogether without ever being mentioned again, leaving us with the woman and the two kids, one of which was her own. The two parts eventually merged into one coherent storyline but that was pretty much it as the ending was sadly, underwhelming with the source of this widespread genocide was virtually left untouched.
Another big issue with the movie, aside from the expected goofs, is the over-simplification of navigating in an open, post-apocalyptic world without sight. How a frightened, rather obese pregnant woman was able to travel safely from house to house with chaos reigning outside, blindfolded, is simply unfathomable.
The film assembled a quite strong cast but was not able to utilize their potential as most of their roles were written off quite early in the screenplay, especially that of BD Wong and Sarah Paulson. Sandra Bullock, whose acting repertoire was supposed to elevate the original script from a typical thriller flick with a twist to something so much more, was mediocre in it if not cringy at times.
All in all the movies left a lot to be desired. The plot was indubitably intriguing but perhaps it is better fit for a series rather than a full-length feature film where it fell short. But with Bird Box being Netflix's most watched film in the opening week, its producers can at least be satisfied with the fact that the audience didn't turn a blind eye to their creation.