The Official “Bird Box” Discussion Thread [Spoilers]

It was ok. Just The Happening meets Night of The Comet. Trevante can have me

 

Oh i did not realize my husband was in this. Guess I have to match it now.

 

*SPOILER ALERT* Let's talk about how predictably both black characters in "Bird Box" get killed sacrificing themselves.

 

It was the first thing I noticed. It's a common trope in Hollywood films.....especially in horror, thrillers, and sci-fi. Another recent example is the most recent Predator flick. Trevante's character sacrifices himself to help the white protagonist. Sterling K Brown's character (who was a complete badass mind you) gets killed, and Keegan Michael Key's character also get killed.

 

My relatives were recommending this show for my next Netflix binge watch. Since @Cyrus-Brooks has the same general outlook as me, I’ll skip it.

Until folk understand the concepts of cultural and economic black nationalism and apply the principles to our own plays, shows, and movies, the magical negro trope will live as strong in the 21st Century as negroes on boxes of Cream of Wheat, Aunt Jemima, and Uncle Bens (and I’ll throw in that black woman from Popeyes Chicken for good measure too lol)...

 

I’d be willing to give it a try if you think the writing is good. Just so tired of tropes. Tropes can work if you put a new spin on them. The whole Austin Power series, for example, was practically built on nothing but Sean Connery/007 tropes.

 

Great opening scene at the beginning of the movie. I like when they start off with a dramatic opening than go back (the proverbial 5 years before at the bottom of the screen) to show how it started. However, it's too bad that the explanation kind of ended there with no real satisfying hints or even conclusion to just what the fuck was going on.

By mid-way into the movie I was still semi interested, but by mid-end of the movie I had another tab open looking at condos I can't afford while still listening to see if clarity was coming.

My conclusion is this.

I like my movies like I like my sex. Good start/opening, intense throughout with more and more build up, and a satisfying conclusion. This movie started fucking me good and then got up and left me with no orgasm. What the holy fuck was going on?

The reason I liked Get Out, besides it being a good movie overall, is that it was mysterious throughout and later fully explained as to what was happening. I never liked or appreciated any movies that leave the audience questioning what was going on or forcing you to have a discussion about it. Im sure many people love that, but I could careless about your "intellectual" movies that try to make me look deep within. I just wanna be fucking entertained for an hour and 45 min.

What were the things that made people kill themselves? Was it spiritual or were the things aliens? Why were some people able to see the things without killing themselves? etc etc

It had great potential and the acting was good, but I think in the end it fell flat.

 

I think Trevante's character was meant to die whether he was black or something else. The other dude's death was bullshit though. It was likely the dumbest death in the movie.

Writing is pretty good but again it's a sci fi/horror flick so it relies more on the acting than writing. Acting was damn good in my opinion.

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Overall, it was a pretty good movie. Nothing ground-breaking for the genre but Sandra did her thing as always and Trevante strongly held his own. Plus, I thoroughly love seeing Trevante act because he's a black man through and through. This movie normalized that for us instead of using us as cast fluff, comic relief, or some other caricature hollywood has come up for us.

Plus the twitter/Instagram meme's a pure gold, yall know how black folks get lmao

 

Because i am almost incapable of focusing on one thing for too long,I like how it went back and forth between the beginning of everything and the river voyage.The one drawback of it was,it let us know Tom wouldn't make.Same for the other pregnant girl. She was kind of getting on my nerves at first,but I like that she acknowledged her sheltered nature. You can be useless,but please don't be oblivious.

The blind dude being in charge of the sanctuary was an interesting twist. I was sure she'd lose a kid,or die herself making it there,but I'm glad I was wrong.

 

Lol, more like “Son of Wokeness”. In the early 90s they made the same racial claim about this horror film


And where there’s woke there’s liar ...
John Carpenter is fighting neo-Nazis over his cult classic film They Live

Anyway, @Nick Delmacy Bird Box be me and the bf’s Friday Night Netflix and chill, I’ll let you know what I think after I see it.

 

I loved that movie when I was growing up. I would watch it every time it came on, along with Big Trouble in Little China and The Running Man. That brings me back......

 

That is intriguing because A Quiet Place is one of the most prominent examples of horror movies setting their rules and then just breaking those rules because of terrible writing.

 

Yep haven’t seen it since it came out but I’m surprised it’s not ranked highly or as known as with Carpenter’s other work.

 

I thought it was OK. It felt like a generic M. Night Shyamalan Movie. I thought the acting performances were great but the overall movie sucked balls. I am also pissed that they left the scary spirit or alien or whatever up to our imagination.

 

Everything I am feeling about this movie(the predictable black character deaths, the "B-rated"-ness of the movie in general especially as a rip-off to the Quiet Place, etc ) has already been said by all yall, but I have three additional observations as well:

um...where is the creature?: I was waiting for the entire movie so that they can show the stupid creature. I feel like I didn't get any closure because of this simple fact.

Trevante Rhodes is FINE fine: this topic has already been beaten to death, but like I told @DreG at some point today, I want to be the sandwich meat between a Trevante-Winston Duke sandwich...enough said. However, I can't help but feel like there were some hints of moonlight acting in Trevante's performance in this movie. He reminded me a lot of Chiron. I am not sure why...

Sandra Bullock's acting was superb: I think she did a fantastic job and her performance throughout the movie was riveting.

 

Bird Box Almost Showed The Creature - Here's What It Looked Like

 

Those are the ones I like the best! I hate over- narration or -explanation (e.g. Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies where Bruce Wayne’s every action is rationalized). One of the most famous (and perfect) horror scenes is the shower stabbing in Hitchcock’s Psycho; you never actually SEE the knife plunged into Janet Leigh’s body, or the killer’s face. The music and quick camera changes help leave it to the viewer to fill in the blanks and imho makes it more terrifying.

 

Whoa, he's out here winning, huh?

 

I agree.

Due to mental illness.

Well there was that one scene in the supermarket....the bald head asshole (gun nut) know in all said it the super market. "All of us are making the end of the world (long pause) great again".

To me there was the message of treating those who are less than in society with fear and respect.

Handicaps are now strengths. Those who were mentally ill could clearly see the "monsters" while we just call them crazy and lock them up. If you saw what they saw us regular folk would go crazy (and kill ourselves).

While those who are blind - another handicap -had nothing to fear and were saviors.

As far as THE "woke" ROOT's article... IMO it would have been better to focus on the mental illness angle vs racism/white supremacy....that shit was annoying.

 

THANK YOU
It was like Trevante's character couldn't just shot the turbines....naw he had to shoot and jump into that muthafucka like he was doing a cannonball into a pool?

While I will always enjoy seeing a Predator and Alien on my screen. That was some bullshit. The smaller Predator came to earth to save humanity by killing as many humans as possible along the way?

 

Trevante Rhodes - glad he got this role because Moonlight and The Predator were not enough. By these 3 roles I feel he has shown some range. Also in these 3 roles I would cast him over Michael B Jordan.


*ALL the non-white folk sacrificed themselves.. The Asian homosexual and the two Black men; this to me came off as expendable forced diversity hires.. I'm happy for the success of the movie and all but these white Hollywood writers and their tropes are the worst.

*The drawings of the monsters were good enough for me. I didn't need to see them. Most of our fears are not visible.

*I just knew "girl" was gonna be mentally ill and not impacted by the monsters.

*All I could think about for the majority of the film was a lyric from Nas's NIGGER when he says, "in the land of the blind the man with one eye is the king". I was like the blind folk and people with cataracts are good so all of the human species will not die.

*Were animals impacted or not? Meaning did / would they go crazy and throw themselves off a cliff? Were only mammals impacted and reptiles, fish, birds, amphibians good?

*Also...um...how is being indoors protection? Were the monsters like vampires and couldn't come in unless they were invited? What if a door was just left wide open?

*What about going outside at night time when there was no Moonlight (see what I did) being that humans have terrible night vision?

*For me there has to be a purpose or end game. I didn't see/feel that with the monsters and it forced me to make up my own. Like maybe they gain energy or substance by feeding on the fears and vulnerabilities but if everybody is dead, then what? Maybe there were demons and forcing humans to kill themselves (which is considered a sin) so their souls could go to hell to the benefit of Satan? Or were they just plain vengeful with no fucks like Medusa turning everybody to stone regardless?

*Like I don't really need a drawn out explanation like @Nick Delmacy stated earlier but like in "A Quite Place", I knew enough to where I wasn't distracted trying to fill in all the holes.

I give Bird Box a C- and will never look at this movie again. The most memorable thing for me was Trevante's arms.

 

See how creative and cerebral this interpretation is vs that bullshit over at TheRoot?
****************** ****************** ********************
Bird Box Is the First Great Monster Movie About This Poisonous Invention

The monsters of Bird Box are social media. Seriously.

Think of Bird Box as a new entry into the old-fashioned 1950s monster movie genre, but instead of the midcentury fears about the Cold War, nuclear weapons, and communism we’re exploring the New Cold War and fears of what social media is doing to our brains. By putting on the blindfolds, the characters of Bird Box are protected from the monsters, which are actually the influences of social media.

Films like The Thing From Another World (1951), Invasion of the Body Snatchers(both the 1956 and 1978 versions), The Blob (1958), The Day of the Triffids (1962), and Them! (1954), are ostensibly monster movies—but they’re actually about the fear of communists infiltrating America, even though the movies don’t talk about the Soviet Union explicitly. The monsters of those old movies were stand-ins, just as the unseen monsters of Bird Box are stand-ins for one of our greatest fears today, the poisonous influence of social media.

I know you might be thinking that I’m only seeing what I want to see in the movie—that the monsters are just a thing that I’m forced to think about every single day, since I write for a technology site. And you might be right! But I sincerely think there’s a strong case to be made that the film’s unseen monsters represent the dangers of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Social media is a form of suicide, the movie warns, as we slowly kill ourselves with one of humanity’s worst inventions. And it’s an invention that’s been exploited by adversary nations like Russia, China, and North Korea.

Time for me to put up or shut up, right? Let’s start with the themes that Sandra Bullock’s character Malorie is exploring through her art. When Malorie’s sister Jessica, played by Sarah Paulson, asks about the painting in her studio, we get to hear what Malorie believes she’s creating through her Last Supper-style tableau.

“I think I see a whole bunch of people sitting together, but they all feel incredibly lonely,” Jessica says.

“The loneliness is just incidental,” Malorie says. “It’s really about people’s inability to connect.”

Most of these people look like they could be staring at a phone or computer. And that’s no accident, of course.



Next we have the place where the monsters first appear on the globe. Some news reports say it’s Romania, while others say the monsters first appear in Russia. And that confusion is part of our modern narrative about “fake news” in the real world. Russian troll factories are churning out content to divide Americans, if U.S. intelligence agencies can be believed.

“Well, it’s in Russia, so...” Malorie says before muting the TV.

“Dangerous” social media created by the Russian government is at our shores, according to the movie. There’s even a graphic that appears on Malorie’s TV that makes the jump from Russia to America pretty literal. Better watch out. It’s coming here.

There’s also the seemingly innocent line delivered by a different TV news anchor after most of the characters are in the first house.

“Do not go outside, avoid social media...” the anchor says before the transmission cuts out entirely. Again, that’s a pretty explicit clue that the thing you’re supposed to fear in this film is social media.

And soon we see another very literal illustration of social media and computers as the threat. When B.D. Wong’s character Greg comes up with the idea to watch the mysterious monsters through the house’s security camera feed, we’re teased with the possibility that there’s a way to watch the monsters without dying. This, of course, ends in disaster.

Greg explains that it’s probably safe to watch the monsters through a computer screen because he’s just going to be watching “pixels and heat.” But if you’ve seen the movie you know how this works out. We get a terrifying shot of Greg watching the screen in horror. The monsters are somehow just in the wind, as we can see on the screen for ourselves. And despite being tied to the chair, Greg manages to kill himself by rocking violently and plunging his head on a nearby corner.



The rest of the survivors hear the commotion upstairs and burst into the room in an effort to save Greg. It really doesn’t get more on-the-nose than John Malkovich’s character Douglas stomping on a computer screen, if you’re looking for very literal hints about where the danger in Bird Box may lie.

Admittedly, at one point while I was watching the movie I thought that maybe the monsters represented Trumpism. But the big strike against that theory is that we seem to have a Trump supporter in the mix. John Malkovich’s character Douglas is a good, old-fashioned asshole—precisely the kind of asshole that Trumpists might identify with. And the screenwriter makes the connection explicit once they get to the grocery store.

“I would like to take this opportunity to make a toast to all of us. Because all of us, collectively, are making the end of the world...” Douglas says in a huge build up. “...great again!”



Yep, he’s a Trump guy. So if the evil monsters represent Trump then Douglas wouldn’t be fighting them, he’d be embracing them. And while Douglas may be both a selfish asshole and a Trump supporter, he is a redeemable human being. You might even call him a hero, given his sacrifice.

So where does all of this leave the humans who are not only impervious to the monsters, but want everyone else to open their eyes and see them? These, of course, are the online trolls.

The psychopathic villain Gary, played fantastically by Tom Hollander, tells lies to get inside the house. He doesn’t arouse the suspicion of the birds because he’s just another human. But he’s evil, and just wants to spread pain. And once inside, Gary is reveling in the misery that he’s causing by literally forcing people to see things they don’t want to see.



And last but not least, the monster seems to be able to emulate the sight and sound of our loved ones. Douglas’s wife thinks that she sees her mother who’s been dead for 10 years, while Malorie hears the voice of her loving partner Tom, played by Trevante Rhodes, after he’s long dead.

This is fundamentally what social media aspires to do, at least on paper. Facebook says it’s all about making connections. It’s whispering to you with little notifications that you’re sure must be people who actually love you. But that’s not really them. It’s their ghost in the machine.

What about the other symbolism scattered throughout the film? Could Bird Box be about racism, as Michael Harriot theorized yesterday on our sister site, The Root? Probably! But I’d float the possibility that racism is just one of the many threats that exist on social media. There are also subplots on motherhood, nature, and even alcohol. You’ll notice that Malorie discusses drinking wine while getting an ultrasound and then has a whiskey with Greg, who reminds her of her father. Once reference is a throwaway, but talking about drinking while pregnant twice probably means something more to the screenwriter.

And that’s why I believe the monsters are more appropriately stand-ins for all of social media. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are incubators of the worst aspects of humanity’s existence (and our treatment of each other) in the 21st century.

Again, I could be wrong, and the monsters could be something else entirely. But that’s what great genre art does—it challenges us to think about our hopes and fears outside of a literal context. Bird Box is a good movie, even if you only watch it literally. But the movie prepares you from the beginning to look deeper, like with Malorie’s art. We’re poisoning ourselves, looking for connections that are ultimately artificial. And often times it just makes us more lonely.

“The loneliness is just incidental,” Malorie said. “It’s really about people’s inability to connect.”

https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/bird-box-is-the-first-great-monster-movie-about-this-po-1831318490

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Good call.

Somebody PLEASE tell Hollywood this! I mean I'm not tryna kill a brotha job opportunities, but I would rather see Trevante more than Michael B Jordan in any movie on any day. Michael B is so ordinary to me in both his looks and acting skills IMO.

 

Yall have alrdy beaten the dog fuk out of this thread, so I'll just add that I want 'girl' to win all of the Golden Globes, Oscars and BET awards.

And yea, how was Rel scared to go w them to the grocery store 1 minute, and then completely sacrificing himself, 5 minutes later?! Smh

 

Thoroughly enjoyed the film. I don’t agree about the black trope observations considering how everybody in the house gets killed except Bullock. If anything, I’d say think pieces should concentrate on the real issues in the film, that is, how much of one’s humanity and values does one keep even in the face of tragedy and strife (Malkovich vs everybody, Bullock vs Rhodes on raising the kids and expectations, etc)

A- on acting, pacing, and directing
B on story

Also, Bird Box was better than half the shit I’ve seen commercially released this past year. They need to realize that streaming platform content needs to be included in Academy Award categories, not just shit shoveled into theatres.

Bonus: stayed for Jennifer Anniston’s “Dumpling”. Another film that was better than most commercial shit and made me realize how fucking fascile and stupid the teen movies of my generation were.

 

Streaming has been included in nominations for both film and television for a couple years now.

 

Really, for the Oscars? Guess I haven’t been looking hard enough at the nominations. I swear 4/5 of everything I saw at the theatre last year should have been straight to video like “Police Academy 17”...