Bird Box bucks holiday trend
FOR so long, movies around the holidays have been merry and bright. Lately, more and more seem murderous and designed to fright.
Take last month’s releases, where, of course, sugary options abounded, such as Mary Poppins
Returns on the big screen and A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding on TV. Then there’s the post-apocalyptic survival story Bird
Box.
Released just days before Christmas on Netflix, the Sandra Bullock-led thriller is about monstrous entities that compel any human who sees them to quickly try to kill themselves. Not exactly the stuff of sugar plum fairies.
But even though Netflix declines to release viewership numbers,
Bird Box seems to have struck a nerve, triggering the creation of memes and online chatter for a very dark film dropped into the festive period.
“I have never ever had as much attention or as many page likes, post likes/ shares and comments on any of my other pages as I have had on this one,” says Heather Drake, who started a Facebook page for fans of the story and is not affiliated with the film or distributors. “It’s been insane. I can’t even come close to responding to all the feedback, if that tells you anything.”
Critics have been mixed toward Bird Box, with many noting similarities to John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place. Variety complained about the “inexplicably bland ensemble” and The Hollywood Reporter sniffed that it was “not all that it might have been.” The Guardian declared it “a bird-brained mess”.
In some ways, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a film about monsters attacking people showed up on the online video streamer on Dec 21. Alternate Christmas movies are all the rage these days, from Die Hard, In Bruges, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Lethal Weapon.
Drake thinks the holiday timing of Bird Box isn’t that important, noting the need for fresh and intriguing movies during the holidays far from usual stale fare like It’s A Wonderful Life or Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.
“I don’t honestly think it would have mattered if it was Dec 21 or July 21,” she said. “However, Dec 21 would give an advantage as many people are on vacation from school and work.”
Netflix’s decision may also be an attempt to replicate last late-December’s hit Bright, starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton. That supernatural cop drama also wasn’t received well by critics but garnered strong word-of-mouth interest and a sequel has been promised.
Bullock has been one of Hollywood’s top stars since her 1994 hit Speed but had never made a horror movie until Bird Box .She told The Associated Press before a special screening in New York last month that the risks she and the cast undertook were somehow appealing.
To evade the movie monsters,
Bullock and two young children are blindfolded while navigating through a forest and a treacherous river. The title refers to a literal box of birds that her character carries – the birds begin to chirp when the unseen evil approaches. Like the timing of the final film, it seemed to be a fresh challenge.
“Anytime that they yelled ‘Stop!’ we knew we had gotten to a place where we could all get injured,” Bullock said. “And we fell. And I said don’t stop the camera unless I say, ‘Stop!”’ – AP