This holiday season, we all watched … a horror film
For so long, movies around the holidays have been merry and bright. Lately, more and more seem murderous and designed to frighten. Over the festive season, sugary options
abounded, such as Mary Poppins Returns on the big screen and A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding on Netflix. Then there was 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. Bullock and two young children have to navigate through a forest and a treacherous river, blindfolded, to evade monsters. The title refers to a literal box of birds that her character carries – they begin to chirp when the unseen evil approaches.
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. “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 about Bird Box. Variety complained about the “inexplicably bland ensemble”, while The Guardian called it “a bird-brained mess.” Netflix’s decision to release it over the holidays may have been an attempt to replicate its hit Bright, released last December, starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton. That supernatural police drama also wasn’t received well by critics, but garnered strong word-of-mouth interest and a sequel has been promised.