Two things:
1. If you are sensitive to being triggered by gore and/or mentions of self-harm and suicide, skip Bird Box. It's not worth it.
2. If you haven't seen Bird Box and still plan on watching it, don't read this. I'm going to spoil the absolute hell out of this movie.
I wasn’t going to watch Bird Box. I’m super picky about horror and I can usually tell when I’m not going to like something by reading the synopsis or watching the trailer. Does this make me biased? Maybe. This serves as your disclaimer.
However, once I logged onto Twitter and saw the trending memes about this movie, I had to give it a chance, because I thought that maybe it was popular for a reason.
My immediate worry going into the movie was the heavy presence of suicide in the plot. Suicide in itself is a touchy subject, one that is heavily personal and possibly triggering to many people.
I worry whenever I see a movie using suicide liberally as a plot point, because it is really serious and really easy to misrepresent.
So, before we get into the actual beginning of the apocalypse, we’re introduced to Malorie (Sandra Bullock) who is a no-nonsense, emotionally distant artist, who is pregnant with a child that she doesn’t particularly want to have. Malorie is shown at her ob-gyn appointment calling the baby an “it” and referring to her pregnancy as a “condition”.
The audience is beaten over the head with the flaw in Malorie’s character, that she is too detached, due to the harsh upbringing she and her sister experienced. (Spoiler: she doesn’t particularly work on this flaw consistently, nor is it consistently portrayed as a flaw. So, there’s that.)
Right after the doctor’s appointment, the creature begins to attack in Malorie’s city, and several graphic suicides begin to take place. Malorie makes it through the initial chaos to a safe house occupied by a diverse group of survivors, including Greg (BD Wong) an asian man who is revealed to be gay just moments before his tragic death, Charlie (Lil Rel Howery), an overweight, comedic relief black man, and Lucy (Rosa Salazar), a spunky young future police officer who is coerced into sleeping with a man (Felix, played by Machine Gun Kelly) just a few scenes after blatantly rejecting him.
There is also Cheryl (Jacki Weaver), a quick-witted elderly woman and Douglas (John Malkovich) who is an insufferable, selfish asshole who makes references to MAGA and vaguely claims to not be homophobic towards Greg, despite antagonizing him in every scene they have together.
I’ll give them this: the characters in this movie are diverse. There is also Olympia, a plus size woman (Danielle Macdonald, star of Netflix’s recent rom-com ‘Dumplin’’) and the main character’s love interest, Tom (Trevante Rhodes) is a black man.
However, this movie begs the question: should points really be given for diversity if none of them live to see the end of the film?
This brings me to the first issue I have with this movie: the deaths. Sure, it’s a horror movie, so death is inevitable, but these deaths follow a pattern that I really can’t ignore.
The first death that occurs after Malorie makes it to the house is Greg. He theorizes that his home security system may be useful in helping them safely see in order to loot for food, wondering whether the entity will be able to still affect them over live video. In order to test this theory, Greg has the other survivors tie him to a chair and leave him to watch the video feed.
Right before leaving him alone, Greg is revealed to be gay, as his husband is offhandedly mentioned (+1 representation, right?). Gregs death comes soon after, and ‘Bird Box’ unapologetically buries their singular gay.
The next on screen death is Charlie, who tackles someone in order to save the other characters. That’s one token black (and, I have seen argued, queercoded) character down.
Right before Charlie’s death, Douglas makes a reference to Trump’s slogan of “Making America Great Again” in a toast and proposes that they abandon the other survivors in order to stay at the store where supplies are. Then, after Charlie dies, Douglas makes a joke about his death, despite the fact that Charlie sacrificed himself to save Douglas in the first place.
Douglas is representative of an old, upper middle class, white Trump supporter who has little regard for the people around him. Despite this, the movie works overtime to make him seem likeable, giving him a prolonged heartfelt scene with Malorie and a heroic death.
It’s important to note that almost every single death in this movie is the direct result of the character attempting to protect another person.
Malorie is kept alive by allowing everyone else to selflessly protect her, eventually ending up alone with the two children five years after the initial apocalypse.
The second, and perhaps the biggest, issue I have with ‘Bird Box’ is in the film's callous and tone deaf handling of issues related to mental illness.
The entity that causes the end of the world, is an invisible thing that shows ones’ worst fear, causing ‘normal’ (Neurotypical? Technically sane?) people to immediately commit suicide. Later in the film, it is revealed that people who are already mentally ill are somehow immune to the entity’s visions. They see something that they believe is beautiful and begin to convince and trick others into looking at the entity, causing death to the normal(?) people (neurotypicals).
Not only does this plot point dramatically simplify the issue of mental illness and serve is a blatant demonization of mentally ill or suicidal people, it also isn’t very well explained. It’s cheap and the mechanics are flimsy and don’t consistently adhere to rules within the world.
The main characters also use words like “psycho” and “crazy” to refer to people who are mentally ill.
I feel like so much progress has been made in recent years to destigmatize mental illness, but this movie takes a giant leap back and uses a fantasy device to turn those who are mentally ill into a dangerous ‘other’.
Like I said, suicide and thoughts of suicide and self-harm are deeply personal and real problems for many people, and I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain why making a fantastical villain out of both issues is problematic. The entity isn’t directly representative or allegorical either. There doesn’t seem to be a deeper meaning behind the suicides.
The film is just exploiting fear surrounding mental illness and suicide, at the expense of those who actually deal with it.
(Note: I’ve seen it argued that the allegory here is that those dealing with thoughts of suicide “could be anyone” and that the suicides in the film represent the idea that people can seem fine on the outside and still be dealing with suicidal thoughts. I would argue that this explanation would only make sense if it weren’t for the reaction that already non-neurotypical people have to the entity. People like Gary are already dealing with mental illness and suicidal tendencies within this film, so the allegory sort of breaks down there, as there is no analog for this reaction in real life.)
I want to switch gears and talk a little bit about Danielle Macdonald’s character, Olympia.
Olympia is a sweet girl. She’s the young, pregnant wife of a soldier deployed overseas. She makes an effort to get close to Malorie, she’s gentle, well-meaning, and is open about her faults. Olympia knows that as a pregnant woman that has been spoiled throughout her life, she’s not much of a help in the current situation, and openly resents the fact that she can’t do more to protect the other survivors.
The great turn in the second act of ‘Bird Box’ comes when Olympia lets Gary (Tom Hollander) into the house. We all have a bad feeling about him, but we can’t blame Olympia for wanting to help someone. Everyone comes to an agreement and allows him to stay, despite Douglas being skeptical.
We later find out that Douglas was right, and Gary is one of the mentally ill people immune to the entity’s visions. Once everyone is distracted by Olympia and Malorie’s babies being born (somehow at the exact same time), Gary strips the coverings from the windows, and forces everyone to look outside, causing the deaths of Olympia, Cheryl, and (after heroically fighting Gary and redeeming his character) Douglas.
Most of the character criticisms I’ve seen on social media, are of people blaming Olympia for these deaths, calling her a “dumb, fat bitch” (many of the criticisms have to do with her weight, and I can’t not take them a little personally) and saying that Tom should have left her outside to die in the first place, despite the fact that she was pregnant and vulnerable. I think that this criticism is unfair, and that her character arc was genuinely compelling, as she actually acknowledges her flaws, and those flaws actually came into play. Olympia’s character is well-written, and though she makes a mistake, she is not any more culpable than anyone else in the movie.
This is more a problem in the commentary of the film, than of the actual film itself, but it still bothers me that everyone hates on Olympia, obviously because she is feminine (Read: weak, because it’s the 1950s, I guess, and femininity is a problem? Right, Twitter?) and not conventionally attractive.
I have not seen any criticism of Tom, despite the fact that he did the exact same thing Olympia did twice, letting people into safe places on two separate occasions, once resulting in the death of Charlie.
My other problem with this twist in the plot is the way in which Gary is notably different from all of the other people we see that are in his condition. He is able to keep his identity secret and wait for a good time to strip the windows. He also lacks the tell-tale clouding of his eyes that everyone else gets after looking at the entity.
That’s what I meant by rule-breaking. Gary’s entire character is inconsistent with everything else in the film, just for the sake of a twist that shouldn’t have been able to happen.
Five years after the end of the world, we learn that Malorie has been raising the two children with Tom, with whom she is now romantically involved. Malorie calls the children ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’, really beating the audience over the head with the fact that she is still as emotionally unattached as she once was. Tom criticizes her for this briefly, but Malorie doesn’t admit to this flaw.
Then comes Tom’s death. He dies, of course, sacrificing himself for Malorie and the kids. He seems to not be much smarter or more savvy in dealing with the entity than he was before, despite the fact that he has somehow survived for five years before this.
His death seems all too convenient, in feeding Malorie’s bland, white success.
Once she and the kids make it to safety, in the form of a school for the blind, where blind people who have always been immune to the entity have set up a shelter for blind and sighted people alike. I will give the filmmakers some credit here, in that they did cast actual blind people in this scene, but only slight credit is due since most of the actual speaking roles here are given to sighted actors.
Now safe in the shelter, Malorie finally gives her children names. Girl is called Olympia and Boy is renamed Tom. It is made apparent in this scene that Malorie hasn’t told Girl anything about her real mother, Olympia. (This is a whole other problem but this is long and I’m tired so I’m gonna leave it alone).
But Malorie’s tiny character growth in this scene gives us some kind of catharsis to end the movie on. The story’s over, at least for Malorie and the kids.
That was a lot. I’m going to just break everything down in list format below so you have a little TL;DR. You’re welcome.
Here is everything wrong with Netflix’s ‘Bird Box’
1. All of the main characters who are queer, non-white, or not conventionally attractive are killed in order to protect the main character, who is a bland white woman.
2. The bland white woman only really experiences superficial character growth when it’s convenient for the plot, and is mostly insincere in doing so.
3. The representations of the entity and how it affects people introduces multiple plot holes, and the rules are inconsistent.
4. The subject of suicide is portrayed in a way that is triggering to many viewers and is not treated with appropriate sensitivity.
5. Mental illness is villainized and oversimplified in order to raise stakes in a way that is tone deaf and insensitive.
6. The way some scenes are written makes it easy for viewers to pass judgement on Olympia, who is already deemed unlikeable by many because of her non-conventionally attractive appearance.
‘Bird Box’ in essence, is tragedy porn more than it is horror. It’s unexplained suicide for the sake of tension, misrepresentation of mental illness for the sake of filling plot holes, and it’s queer and POC characters for the sake of having people to sacrifice. All so that a bland white woman can finally have a heroic moment the one time it counts.
Needless to say, I wasn't a huge fan, but what did you think? If I'm out of my lane or off base, please tell me so, I want to know what you think.
M. Lucille Lane
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