Bird box

gmisk

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2737304/

Anyone else a fan of this book?
Not sure how it will work as a film... Also really not sure about the cast...

Decuc500

Yeah I loved this book. I think I read it in two days, I couldn't put it down.

It will be very interesting to see how the film adapts it. I really hope it does the book justice.

gmisk

Decuc500 wrote: »

Yeah I loved this book. I think I read it in two days, I couldn't put it down.

It will be very interesting to see how the film adapts it. I really hope it does the book justice.

Glad to hear I am not alone
I read in about a week quick for me lol.

Sandra bullock seems an odd one for lead she is a fair bit older than I thought.

peteeeed

coming 21st december , looks a bit like 'a quiet place'

gmisk

Trailer up for this.
https://youtu.be/o2AsIXSh2xo

Not sure about it tbh....

Slydice

Second trailer..

Still unsure about it cos it's hard to tell..
Could be pretty scary

p to the e

A Quiet Place..... with eyes.

Unfortunately Malkovich has turned into a canary in a coalmine for me. If he's in it I'm wary of the film.

pixelburp

Poor timing really, the comparisons with Quiet Place are inevitable. The reviews I've read so far seem pretty mixed, leaning to negative.

TheSheriff

Watched this last night - wasn't familiar with the source material.

Rather enjoyed it actually, thought the pacing was slow going in the middle but overall I liked the concept. Obviously would have enjoyed more development of the 'creatures'.

Not a bad watch over the Xmas break !

Mad_maxx

It's far too long.

aaakev

Just watched it tonight, thought it was good. Agree with above about it being a bit slow in the middle and i wanted to know more about what was going on but i think its worth a watch

yerwanthere123

Finished this tonight, had no knowledge of the book at all. It was ok, it felt a bit like a Dawn of the Dead knockoff to me.

They needn't have bothered with all the people in the house, so I was glad when they all took each other out in quick fashion.

All in all a decentish watch, but I don't think it'll be making many people's year-end top ten list.

NIMAN

I had read the other day it was Voted worst film of the year, but I'm searching reviews of it now and many are quite good.

Thespoofer

Just finished watching it.... Not great tbh.

Mad_maxx

yerwanthere123 wrote: »

Finished this tonight, had no knowledge of the book at all. It was ok, it felt a bit like a Dawn of the Dead knockoff to me.

They needn't have bothered with all the people in the house, so I was glad when they all took each other out in quick fashion.

All in all a decentish watch, but I don't think it'll be making many people's year-end top ten list.

Mix of Dawn of the dead, I am legend and a quiet place.

Frank O. Pinion

peteeeed wrote: »

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added today

That's either the worst review of Bird Box I've read, or you can't keep your open tabs in order...again.

peteeeed

Frank O. Pinion wrote: »

That's either the worst review of Bird Box I've read, or you can't keep your open tabs in order...again.

its a Christmas tradition

Shelga

Watched it yesterday, I thought it was reasonably good, certainly far from terrible?? Sandra Bullock was good in it, can't believe she's 54! I was thinking she was too old to play the part of a pregnant woman, but then again she does look at least 10 years younger.

I too would have liked to know more about

what people were seeing to cause them to commit suicide, and more about the phenomenon in general. The ending was also a bit too neat.

TerrorFirmer

Actually thought it was quite good so not sure where some of these 'worst film of the year' opinions are coming from or what they're even based on. Sure, it's not stellar, and there are an awful lot of narrative conveniences, sure, but it's a movie at the end of the day....and I really couldn't see how anyone could consider it that bad.

It's very similar to A Quiet Place, not as good, but very watchable and Sandra Bullock is decent as is John Malkovich. As always you've left with so many itches that remain unscratched but all in all, it's good.

I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales last night as well, and that actually has a higher IMDB score even though it's a total turd of a movie in comparison.

kerplun k

I watched Bird Box last night. It was okay, I think it would be harsh to call this a bad film. It was perfectly watchable but I don't think the comparison with A Quiet Place is a fair one. A Quiet Place is a far superior film.

One of the reasons why A Quiet Place is so much better is because director John Krasinski put the extra effort into creating a whole backstory for his "creatures".

Like Bird Box, A Quiet Place has practically zero exposition and a very small introduction and It leaves us right in the middle of the apocalypse, but because Krasinski had created this whole backstory, it gave him the freedom and confidence to tell the story he wanted to tell without leaving the audiences feeling cheated.

You can tell from watching it that Krasinski is confident in his film making. He's in control the whole time.
So much so, I would have been perfectly happy with not seeing the "creatures" at all in A Quiet Place. And because Krasinski knows that we know, that he knows the mystery, this allows him focus on the deeper meanings of the film, about family, struggle and the lengths people go through to protect their family.

And this is exactly what lets Bird Box down. The filmmakers have no idea whats causing the mass suicides and killings and even worse, they have no interest in it. They use the mystery and the backdrop of this "global event" to tell a story about loneliness, motherhood, human connection etc, and try to ignore the main reason why you are watching the film. its a cheap trick that you might get way with if your writing and directing is very good, but here, it's only average at best.

On the positive side, there's some great performances here and it has some nice scenes, the build up and fallout from when the event hits America is great, but I think in modern film-making, filmmakers need to just do that little bit extra, Its not enough for Directer Susanne Bier to just tell us this is happening without knowing it herself, and then expect the audiences to just go on this journey with Sandra Bullock and Co. and not be critical at the lack of answers when the credits roll.

I just think that if your making a film like this, you should try and craft some backstory into why its happening, even if you are not going to show it on screen. Don't choose a supernatural post-apocalyptic film to tell your story about loneliness, pick a different genre, otherwise expect justifiable backlash and criticism, especially from Sci-Fi fans.

Drumpot

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Actually thought it was quite good so not sure where some of these 'worst film of the year' opinions are coming from or what they're even based on. Sure, it's not stellar, and there are an awful lot of narrative conveniences, sure, but it's a movie at the end of the day....and I really couldn't see how anyone could consider it that bad.

It's very similar to A Quiet Place, not as good, but very watchable and Sandra Bullock is decent as is John Malkovich. As always you've left with so many itches that remain unscratched but all in all, it's good.

I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales last night as well, and that actually has a higher IMDB score even though it's a total turd of a movie in comparison.

Yeh it was watchable as somebody said.

I’m not sure I feel there’s much difference between it and a”a quiet place”, maybe the latter being a bit better. Feels like a quiet place has been overly praised in the same Way this movie was overly panned.

Fysh

kerplun k wrote: »

I watched Bird Box last night. It was okay, I think it would be harsh to call this a bad film. It was perfectly watchable but I don't think the comparison with A Quiet Place is a fair one. A Quiet Place is a far superior film.

One of the reasons why A Quiet Place is so much better is because director John Krasinski put the extra effort into creating a whole backstory for his "creatures".

Like Bird Box, A Quiet Place has practically zero exposition and a very small introduction and It leaves us right in the middle of the apocalypse, but because Krasinski had created this whole backstory, it gave him the freedom and confidence to tell the story he wanted to tell without leaving the audiences feeling cheated.

You can tell from watching it that Krasinski is confident in his film making. He's in control the whole time.
So much so, I would have been perfectly happy with not seeing the "creatures" at all in A Quiet Place. And because Krasinski knows that we know, that he knows the mystery, this allows him focus on the deeper meanings of the film, about family, struggle and the lengths people go through to protect their family.

And this is exactly what lets Bird Box down. The filmmakers have no idea whats causing the mass suicides and killings and even worse, they have no interest in it. They use the mystery and the backdrop of this "global event" to tell a story about loneliness, motherhood, human connection etc, and try to ignore the main reason why you are watching the film. its a cheap trick that you might get way with if your writing and directing is very good, but here, it's only average at best.

On the positive side, there's some great performances here and it has some nice scenes, the build up and fallout from when the event hits America is great, but I think in modern film-making, filmmakers need to just do that little bit extra, Its not enough for Directer Susanne Bier to just tell us this is happening without knowing it herself, and then expect the audiences to just go on this journey with Sandra Bullock and Co. and not be critical at the lack of answers when the credits roll.

I just think that if your making a film like this, you should try and craft some backstory into why its happening, even if you are not going to show it on screen. Don't choose a supernatural post-apocalyptic film to tell your story about loneliness, pick a different genre, otherwise expect justifiable backlash and criticism, especially from Sci-Fi fans.

To be fair to it, there are also numerous sci-fi and fantasy films that spent ages on working out the backstory but forgot to have characters worth a damn and were, IMO, worse films than Bird Box as a result. (Mortal Engines is a good recent example IMO, a film whose screenplay clearly valued clumsy worldbuilding over giving characters any sort of depth whatsoever.)

I appreciate that it can be frustrating if your interest in the film is down to the Event and its background, but I think that Bird Box manages to tell a convincing story about what it would be like to be caught up in a world-ending event that you don't understand.

Given the premise and the narrative approach, I think the smarter move was to not explain the nature of the problem. With the narrative focus on Malorie and the structure of the story as is, it would strain credulity and frankly be kind of irrelevant to have a sidestory where The Secret Origins Of The Creatures are revealed. According to Wikipedia the book from which the film is adapted does not provide any explanation either, so I expect it was simpler to stick with that approach.

I didn't think there were any obvious points where Bird Box contradicted itself or made narrative leaps, but that's not to say they aren't there Having said that, I think A Quiet Place was a more refined approach to a similar premise, and I agree that part of its strengths are down to Krasinski having a clear understanding of the backstory to the world whether or not the characters or audience know any of the details.

(Apparently in the book

dogs, birds and other animals are also subsceptible to the creature

which, from an SF perspective, would have annoyed me more as specifically showing this would, for me at least, raise more questions about how specifically the creature triggers specific effects in the brains of its victims...)

peteeeed

https://twitter.com/NetflixFilm/status/1078735051406204928

Testament1

Unseen force causes mass suicides with no explanation. All too familiar to anyone who's previously seen The Happening. Handled a bit better in Bird Box but that shouldn't be hard given that The Happening was total garbage.

Grand to pass a bit of time but nothing great.

gmisk

Saw this finally tonight... It was OK...
They seemed to make a couple of changes from the book, which didn't work.
I thought bullock was fine in it, but she isn't who I pictured for the part. I would agree its probably poor timing with a quiet place, but bare in mind the book was out in 2014.
I would definitely recommend the book over the film.

johnny_ultimate

After a year in which Netflix finally followed through and delivered a reasonably steady stream of interesting films (and one masterpiece) Bird Box feels like a callback to not even 12 months ago, when the good stuff was a rare exception and most of the originals felt like studio castoffs.

If not exactly Bright bad, it's still a rather uninspiring piece of work. I'm not familiar with the book, but even though it's not the filmmakers' fault it definitely came across as a mix of a couple of recent and not-so-recent films, most obviously A Quiet Place and The Happening. It's better than the latter (not difficult) but falls well short of the former. It does exactly what it needs to do and not much more than that. 'Okay' has been said a few times in this thread, and really that's exactly what it is. It's reasonably tense. It's reasonably well-acted. It's reasonably well-crafted. Just nothing is done particularly well at all. It occasionally veers into outright badness -

the big climactic forest encounter felt random and off when it feels like it should have doubled down on what had been established to that point

. Mostly, it's just okay.

I was surprised to see Susanne Bier's name pop up as director at the end, but it fits with what little I've seen of her work in the past - self-serious and generally middling. On the plus side, Netflix has proven they can do better than this now... so hopefully they'll continue to do so, despite this one's outrageously large viewership (although the company still insisting on keeping their numbers secretive unless it suits them remains terrible policy for any of us interested in seeing how all these originals are doing).

Bacchus

Watched it last night and found it rather enjoyable. Definitely unfortunate timing with A Quiet Place fresh in people's minds and it will draw comparisons (which it will largely loose IMO). It's still a really good movie in it's own right. I liked the back and forth with the timelines to reveal the threat in parallel with one timeline giving insights into the experiences of the other. The nature of the creature was well handled too. I notice a few posters wishing they gave more info on them or on what people were seeing but I think that would have diminished the tension. The initial attack was well done (shades of Dawn of Dead as mentioned already) and the shopping trip and

Rick's (I think that's his name) attack in the house

were well done. Actually I think the scene with

the guy watching the monitors

to be the best build up of tension that the movie pulled off.

Bullock is the star vehicle of this and I thought she was excellent in the flash forward scenes... she's fine in the flash back scenes too but is more of a passenger really... just another person in the house. I thought "Girl" was outstanding. Maybe it's just the parent in me but every little glance or look or quiver of lip got me. She sold the peril of being a 5 year old girl in this world (

with an "unloving mother" to boot

) perfectly. The scene on the boat

when choosing who to look

...

Anyway, so yeah though it was good, had a nice bit of tension and some fine acting. My main grievance would be how

they only suddenly (after 5 years) come in contact with the safe zone group... and only for about 2 minutes at that

.

The Black Oil

Slightly odd watching this the night after seeing John Malkovich play Poirot in the ABC Murders. He's a secondary character here, I'll just call him Apocalypse Guy. Overall, as others have said, Bird Box is basically 'alright' - I haven't read the source material and I avoided the trailers. It struggles mostly in the middle, I reckon. Comparisons with A Quiet Place - it's similar in the sense the rules are set out early on. Where I think it falls down is it lacks the tactile sense of what's happening, the blindfold aspect and that sort of thing did work, but the threat not so much. Nor for instance, does it have the supermarket based fear or horror of The Mist. The kids are quite good, as is Bullock. Tom - just a little too clean as a character. I quite liked the ending, actually. Maybe I'm a sucker for that sort of thing.

JohnCreedon81

One big giant meh. Bored me silly to be honest. Felt it was surely nearly over, checked the timer, an hour left! Would not recommend.

rob316

I liked:
The film, it was solid, told the story with some decent acting.

I didn't like:
Sandra bullock. She looks like Michael Jackson, awful nose job

Sad Professor

Awful.

Anyone who hasn't watched it yet, spare yourself.