‘Bird Box’ Is Overhyped

As Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav once said, “Don’t believe the hype!”

All I kept hearing about these past few weeks was how Bird Box is a great movie. After all the memes on social media, people writing reviews and seeing people record themselves doing the #BirdBoxChallenge, I finally decided to check out the movie.

I don’t understand what the big hype around the movie was about. Don’t get me wrong, it was extremely suspenseful and gave me a lot of anxiety, worrying about what would happen to Malorie, Sandra Bullock’s character, and the children, but the movie’s plot and the ending had noticeable holes in it.

Before we go any further: THE REST OF THE ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS.

One of its flaws was that some of the infected humans didn’t end up killing themselves, and somehow stayed alive only to encourage the survivors to open their eyes and stare at the creatures so they will die. However, the movie never gave a rationale for this behavior. I wanted to know why these humans were betraying the survivors and working for the monsters, and how they were even able to stay alive while being infected.

The ending was poor to me as well. After Malorie and the children found refuge, with the rest of the survivors at the school for the blind, the movie never gave us an answer as to what will happen in the future. Will the monsters end up being defeated? Did they find something that will try and kill the monsters? Is there a plan of attack for the monsters? Plus so many other questions.

I heard there is an alternate version based on the book’s ending where all of the survivors are forced to go blind to stay alive, but the director of the film Susanne Bier chose to omit this from her version, stating, “I'm not particularly interested for the audience to leave, from the cinema or their own screen, with a kind of completely bleak point of view. That's not what I believe in.”

Do you think Bird Box is overhyped?

Would you have liked it better if the survivors blinded themselves?