Don't look now

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2019)

Bird Box is a mix between A Quiet Place and The Happening - not as good as the former but much better than the latter.
This horror film follows a pregnant woman (Sandra Bullock) and her group of companions as they struggle to survive after the arrival of mysterious creatures whose mere sight turns people crazy and suicidal.
If you were annoyed by the plot holes of A Quiet Place (a film I loved, but it does have many implausibilities), Bird Box will make your brain boil. A huge dose of suspension of disbelief is necessary to accept how these constantly blindfolded people can do things like drive around (using GPS, but still...), hike through a forest, navigate a river on a boat.
The film is well-crafted enough that the inherent absurdity of these situations didn't irritate me, although it did often feel like the (blind) elephant in the room.
There is a nice amount of tension, but the movie misses some major opportunities. First, we often hear the creatures but never get to see them. Now, giving us a full, clear look of the monsters would have been idiotic and broken the whole film, as no CGI beastie could have lived up to the main premise.
The moviemakers should have designed some kind of Lovecraftian/Gigerian eldritch abomination, resisting the temptation to show it in its entirety but giving us just some glimpses: an eye, a claw, a tentacle, scratches on a wall, footprints in the mud (think the first act of A Quiet Place minus the initial bridge scene).
There are some neat ideas - when the monsters are close, birds go wild and gravity seems slightly disrupted, with leaves and hairs floating upward - but the premise was screaming for more of this stuff. In fact, they could have gone full Lovecraft, adding details like constellations in the night sky being slightly off, weather out of control, people plagued by nightmares...
Also, the creatures never physically attack the survivors; they represent a constant threat, but a somewhat passive one. There is a chase in a forest which should be terrifying but is only tense...because we have no indication the creatures will *do* anything to our protagonists if they catch them. Sure, the concept of these monsters you can't even look at is creepy, but it's never going to feel as scary to our mammalian brains as something which is physically, actively trying to kill you.
Imagine Alien... if the Xenomorph could hurt you ONLY if you look at it. It's still a frightening scenario, but it doesn't quite pack the same punch, does it?
In fact, a group of victims introduced late in the film - when exposed to the creatures they don't kill themselves but turn insane and force other people to watch - feel more menacing than the actual monsters.
Still, I enjoyed the film. Director Susan Bier does a great job with the material she is given. Performances are solid: Bullock is excellent and her character feels believably flawed without going overboard; John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson and Tom Hollander are fine in secondary roles.
7/10