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Bird Box - Keeps Viewers in Suspense

Check out Joel's review:

Submitted by Bethany on Wed, 12/26/2018 - 11:39
Rating
5

I have a love-hate relationship with apocalyptic/survivalist style movies. On the one hand I usually love the mystery inherent in the story - what exactly happened to thrust people into this awful new world? On the other hand, watching them is usually really stressful for me - so many threats around every corner, not to mention imagining how I would (or more likely wouldn't) survive in the same situation. 

Bird Box falls more on the love it side for me when it comes to these movies. The story follows Sandra Bullock as Mallory - we see here story jumping back and forth between back when she was pregnant on the day everything started to go wrong, and the present where she is escaping down the river towards a supposed haven. Both sections of the story leave you in suspense about what is going to happen to these intrepid survivors. 

We spent a lot of the movie criticizing the moves the characters made to survive - discussing what we would do differently that would be better. So while for a bit it kind of felt like maybe the writing wasn't good, I realized that making mistakes in the best way to survive is very realistic. Not everyone goes through life thinking about what they would do in situations like this (apparently we do?) or even if they did, once the stress of the situation hits you might not be thinking the most logically. 

SPOILER ALERT
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The only big critique I do have is how the children were portrayed in the movie. These two children are 5 years old and have only ever known this world where they can't use their sight outside. I think they would have adapted to the situation much more easily and would have incredible hearing and other heightened senses to deal with the world around them. The movie kind of acted like they were just regular kids suddenly thrust into this situation (like the adults were at the beginning) rather than natives to this life. 

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SPOILER DONE

Overall I really enjoyed this movie and if you tend to like this genre I think you will enjoy it. On a scale of apocalyptic movies I'd say it's better than How It Ends, not as good as A Quiet Place, and on par with Extinction