Bird Box (

2018

) ½

I must be getting old, because here I sit, open-mouthed and in absolute disbelief at how such a crappy movie could be so god-damn popular. At least when a mediocre film like Black Panther (2018) grosses a billion and change, I can console myself that the film is basically sound and has some cool looking visuals. Not so here. Bird Box is just a sub-par Dawn of the Dead (1978) clone with a shit-ton of structure issues and a supernatural threat that doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense. It makes me want to yell out: “What is wrong with these kids today?” The only thing saving me from turning into a full-blown crotchety old man yelling at the sky is the fact that this movie seems to be less popular with the kids, and more targeted at moms. Indeed, I've heard it referred to as the possible progenitor of a new sub-genre of “Mom Horror.” Hell, I suspect that the reason why so many people watch this was because it was a Christmas-time compromise between older and younger generations. The best sortof compromise that leaves everyone basically unsatisfied. Hell, I myself watched it for similar reasons, when we couldn't get Chinese subtitles working on Chinatown (1974) or Body Heat (1981) (my in-laws are big fans of neo-noirs). It fills a specific niche, one that I find more openly offensive than the truly wretched movie: it's blandly inoffensive lowest-common denominator fair. Something that can just be put on in the background and largely ignored. It's the kind of bad movie that could only exist on a streaming service. Indeed, it seems like the intended way to watch this movie is to spend the entire run-time playing tetris on your phone, and only glancing up occasionally.

We begin in medias res, with our main character Maloire staring directly at the camera and telling her two children (creatively named “Boy” and “Girl”) that they are about to embark on a long and dangerous journey down the river. She ensures her children that that the only hope they have for survival is that the two kids follow her instructions without question or hesitation. It's an effective hook, that should introduce us to our principal characters and establish the film's dangers and stakes. Too bad that after the trio has barely gotten started on their epic journey through the post-apocalyptic wilderness, the film cuts back to five years earlier when Malorie was pregnant and the world was still normal. Malorie's sister, Jessica, takes her to a checkup with her Obstetrician, when out of nowhere an epidemic of the crazies starts to sweep over the world and people start committing suicide right, left and center. Geeze, who looked at the dismal box office and the near-universal critical scorn of The Happening (2008) and decided that it was the best movie to rip-off? After shit hits the fan, Jessica throws herself in front of a truck and Malorie ducks inside a nearby house where a diverse group of survivors has gathered, Night of the Living Dead (1968) style. The survivors quickly figure out the general impression of the threat, so they block out the windows and hunker down for a prolonged siege.

Now, were this flashback a brief sequence that established the nature of the supernatural menace before returning to the dangerous journey in the present, it would work out just fine. But Bird Box is going to spend more than half of its run-time in the past, interrupting the primary narrative at regular intervals. Since there's no trace of any characters save Malorie, girl, and boy in the present and because this is a horror movie we can deduce that most of the characters we meet in the past are doomed. And boy, do we ever meet a lot of characters. Hell, there are so many that I'm not even going to try to remember all their names. There's the gay Asian guy who owns the house, a lady police cadet, some punk with bleached blonde hair that looks like he's cosplaying Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a grandma, a nerdy black guy, a cool black guy, a fat pregnant lady, and John Malkovich who plays an alcoholic lawyer named Douglas. This movie suffers a great deal from the now typical backfire of having good liberals write minority and female characters. There's a worry that if they give Malorie or any of the other housemates real flaws or personalities, or really anything beyond their most superficial traits, it will somehow be considered racists/sexists/homophobic. Now, since Douglas is the only old white guy in the group, he is quickly designated as the principal jerk-ass and the source of all internal tension. He constantly belittles and insults the other characters and tries his damnedest to antagonize and alienate the audience. The problem is, he's the only character who gets a real personality (a nasty side-effect of refusing to give non-straight/non-white/non-males any flaws), and John Malkovich, the actor who plays him, is easily the most skilled performer in the film. So despite the efforts of the filmmakers, the audience finds themselves most empathizing with the hated straight white male.

What's more, Douglas is effectively Cassandra from Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Throughout the course of the movie, he is constantly dispensing correct advice and warnings to his fellow survivors only to be disregarded. If only they actually listened to the crotchety old bastard, the group could have avoided a whole bunch of disasters and setbacks. When the gay Asian guy decides to try looking at the monster through a security camera, Douglas warns him that it's a terrible idea, shortly thereafter, the gay Asian guy goes insane and bashes his head on the side of his desk. When the fat pregnant lady turns up at their front-door, Douglas wants to tell her to take a hike, but the others insist on letting her in; shortly thereafter they are running out of food and have to take a risky supply run to a nearby grocery store. When they get to the store, Douglas suggests they just hole up there instead of remaining at the house, as the supplies they can shepherd back and forth are limited by the size of their car. Naturally this completely sensible piece of advice is shouted down as heartless and cruel. When yet another stranger turns up at their door, Douglas wants to send him away but once again the others let him in. This time they decide they've enough of Douglas' helpful advice and locking him in the garage to get a bit of peace and quiet. Of course, their new guest turns out to be a dangerous lunatic who wants to show everyone the mind-melting monster outside.

Wait, shouldn't this guy be dead if he's seen the monster? Well, as it turns out not everyone who sees the monster immediately kills themselves. If you are sufficiently crazy, the sight of the monster seems to have a restorative property to your mind, making you almost totally rational. The only problem is that just like that one guy whole lost five pounds by switching to some fad diet, the recently insane are very eager to share their newfound cure with the rest of the world. So these guys form roving pacts that go around trying to get anyone who hasn't taken a look at the monster yet to open their eyes. This premise raises the question of just how crazy do you have to be in order to turn into one of these gangs? Does somebody with ADD kill themselves when they see the monster, or do they turn into a monster evangelist. I'm guessing that somebody with major depression would become a monster's witness, but what about those poor sods with Dysthymia? Are they crazy enough to survive? Maybe this is something that was covered in more detail in the original novel, but here it feels like it wasn't really thought through.

Back in the part of the movie with real tension, the one where we don't already know who is going to live and die, Malorie and the kids make their way down the river facing setbacks and problems along the way. Now, even being generation 0 growing up in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, I still cannot believe that any five year old would be so obedient. Have the screenwriters never been on a car trip with your average kindergarten-er? I can't believe that there was never a scene where one of the pair took off their blindfold, and was castigated by Malorie for it. “Didn't I tell you not to take off your blindfold?” She'd ask. “I don't know.” The kid would reply with a goofy smile. Despite this absurdity, this part of the film at least betrays a few faint glimmers of what could be an interesting premise: The unique threat of navigating the apocalyptic landscape while blindfolded, the desperate journey through a variety of dangers, the lurking question of whether Malorie will sacrifice herself, her own child, or the child of a stranger that she has raised when the time comes. The only problem is that Malorie spends most of the film acting like the actress has just taken a large dose of xanax and when called upon to emote she can at beast reach the level of a cross mom being diplomatic at a PTA meeting. I know, the emotional arch of protagonist is suppose to go from cynical bad-ass, desperately clinging to survival, to fully realized human being, but it can't work when I'm kept at such arms length from the character.