Sandra Bullock huffs and puffs through Netflix's feather-brained sci-fi thriller
Dir: Susanne Bier; Starring: Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, Danielle MacDonald, Trevante Rhodes, Tom Hollander, Sarah Paulson, 15 cert, 124 mins.
Beaten to the aliens-with-weird-sensory-fetish punch by John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place, Bird Box must make do with the booby-prize of a pre-Christmas splashdown on Netflix.
The acclaim heaped upon Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-tipped Roma and the Coen brothers’s The Ballad of Busker Scruggs suggests the streaming service may one day become a gold star destination for film. But that time is not yet here and Netflix’s present incarnation as dumping ground for mediocre movies makes it the perfect home for this watered-down Sandra Bullock horror (also receiving limited cinema release).
Bird Box is a tidy but in the end underwhelming sci-fi thriller, perfectly average in every way aside from its delicious central concept. Extraterrestrials – or, at any rate, some force beyond mortal comprehension – have wiped out humanity using a unique party trick. We need only gaze upon them and despair – and shortly afterwards, die by suicide.
The premise – HP Lovecraft-meets-the-Biblical rapture – is horribly compelling, which is probably why the rights to Josh Malerman’s 2014 novel were snapped up a full 12 months before publication. Alas, its thunder has been thoroughly stolen by A Quiet Place and its adjacent scenario of aliens with super-sensitive hearing laying waste to the earth.
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