SANDRA BULLOCK PLAYS AGAINST TYPE IN DYSTOPIAN THRILLER ‘BIRD BOX’
BERLIN— Best-known for romantic comedies, Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock has to fight for survival in the dark, dystopian thriller, “Bird Box.”
Bullock, known for “Miss Congeniality,” “The Blind Side” and “Gravity,” plays Malorie, a woman desperate to keep her two children safe from an unseen threat that leads people to commit suicide.
Premiering the film in Berlin, the 54-year-old said that while she was not usually a fan of scary movies, she enjoyed adding the genre to her portfolio of work.
“Here, we had a journey that couldn’t have happened without this deep, complex, intricate love story about a family and a social commentary on what we all feel is the state of the world,” Bullock told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.
“Everyone has a different thought about what’s happening in the world today, so those two blending together is a rare thing.”
Based on the 2014 novel by Josh Malerman, “Bird Box” sees Malorie take her children on a dangerous trip into the wild, all blindfolded, as they try to escape an “ominous unseen presence” which, if seen, leads to devastating consequences.
“I found I became very agitated, very angry, very frustrated, short-tempered, and I didn’t realize it was a result of having been blindfolded until halfway through,” Bullock said.
“I went ‘Oh my God, it’s because I don’t have my tools of expression as an actor.’ But in the end, it helped give a jagged feeling to those scenes rather than if I had holes cut in my blindfold and I could see, and I was pretending to stumble and be blind.”
“Bird Box,” a Netflix film directed by Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier, also stars Bullock’s “Oceans’ Eight” costar Sarah Paulson and John Malkovich.