First Take: Bird Box- 70 million people can’t be wrong about a film, right?

SYNOPSIS: Five years after an ominous unseen presence drives most of society to suicide, a mother and her two children make a desperate bid to reach safety.

So, Netflix have received a fair bit of attention lately purely because of the runaway success of this film. With Susanne Bier at the helm, this is arguably the streaming release’s biggest original film to date… it’s just a shame that is so derivative.

Don’t get me wrong, Bier does a good job directing the film, and coming in at 2 hours 5 minutes, some bits work in terms of the pacing, but others fall about as flat as a pancake that’s been run over by a monster truck- that isn’t to say that the film is awful, but some elements could have been executed a little better. Working to a script from Eric Heisserer- the guy who adapted our 2016 Film of the Year Arrival for the big screen- the film does have its moments, but unfortunately it just doesn’t work as well as the source material (a book by Josh Malerman), and while it may have been conceived before A Quiet Place took the box office by storm, we’ve seen this plot done loads of times before. The cinematography comes from Salvatore Totino, who does a good job creating the world of the film, and as ever Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross provide the ambient score that only they can really perfect.

With the performances though, you have an incredible cast that do a great job even with the limitations of the script. Obviously everybody has seen this because of Sandra Bullock’s brilliant work in the lead role- and that is quite rightly the main focus of this film, she is brilliant as per usual. Supporting her is a cast that includes Sarah Paulson, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Tom Hollander, Colson ‘Machine Gun Kelly’ Baker and quite a list of others, but this is the one part of the film that is able to surpass the quality of the technical side of things. Sure, this film was made for $20million, but still, it could’ve been so much better.

THE VERDICT

I’d much rather watch Show Dogs blindfolded than sit through Bird Box a second time. Yes, it’s rightly had a lot of attention because of that Sandra Bullock performance, but that’s all it really is- a good piece of acting that’s overshadowed by some very rookie errors.

RATING: 3/5