Put on your blindfolds

By ANDREW HOWE

On December 21, 2018, Netflix released their latest original, Bird Box. It was directed by Susanne Bier and based off the novel of the same name. It includes notable actors such as Sandra Bullock (Mallorie), Trevante Rhodes (Tom), John Malkovich (Douglas) and Sarah Paulson (Jessica).

The movie starts out with Mallorie telling two children that the upcoming journey will be tough and dangerous. Telling them that they should not remove their blindfolds no matter what or else they will die. Then it jumps back to five years earlier, something it does a lot in this film, which I was not a fan of. Mallorie and her sister Jessica are on their way for Mallorie’s pregnancy check-up. On Mallorie’s way out of the checkup she sees a lady smashing her head off the window persistently as nurses, doctors and security guards try to pull her away. Mallorie runs down to the car where Jessica is waiting and then tells her to drive away. While driving, the both of them see a lot of crashes and people committing suicide. Jessica all of a sudden has a sudden change of personality and her eyes become dark. She then tries to put her car into the other lane and wreck the car. She flips the car, then walks out fine but steps into the other lane right in front of a semi truck. With Jessica now dead, Mallorie goes and runs away while being constantly pushed over by others running. She then falls in front of a house where a women who we later find out was Douglas’ wife comes out to help her back into the house but then sees the mysterious monster and walks into a car that is fully on fire and explodes a couple seconds later.

The movie is very suspenseful with some parts that will make you scared for the characters on the screen. Since we are not shown the monster the entire length of the movie, we are immersed into the environment of the movie. This is what I like about any movie that can do this. If a movie can successfully make their audience invested into the movie and make it seem like they are apart of the movie can be a really good thing. Except when it goes too far, earlier in January there was a big trend that came because of this movie. Since everyone in the movie wore blindfolds outside, their is many people that are wearing blindfolds outside while doing many tasks such as driving and crossing traffic.

This challenge has caused a lot of injuries and a few deaths, because of this Netflix put out a warning saying not to do this challenge because it can be very dangerous.

Recently there has been more controversy surrounding this movie. In the opening scenes of the movie, there was footage from the 2013 Canada’s Lac-Mégantic rail tragedy. This event killed more than 40 people. The citizens of Lac-Mégantic are extremely upset that they used this footage and demand that it is taken out of the movie. Netflix has responded back to them and said that the footage is not going to be removed.

Other than this challenge, I think this movie is a good adaptation of the novel, but it can drag along in many places that either has few action and suspense or a lot a talking between characters. The movie could have been better but I still really enjoyed this idea.