Bird Box Review

Netflix's new film is a bland, Cliche ridden, and unsuspenseful film that commits one of the biggest crimes a film can commit: being boring

Bird Box's premise is an interesting one. Some plague or monster is devastating the earth and if you see it, you kill yourself. It is a very interesting premise that has a lot of grounds to be exciting and suspenseful. And at first, I thought it would be like that. Seeing how Sandra Bullock's character tells her kids to keep the blindfolds no matter what happens or what they hear, and if they take them off they could die; it all seems pretty interesting. However, things slowly start to fall apart.

For starters, one awful aspect of the films is the editing and the pacing. Just the first 20-30 min of this film shows the entirety of how poorly edited and paced this film was. The movie starts with Bullock telling her kids to cover their eyes with the blindfolds. After that, the film goes into one of its many flashback sequences. Bullock is seen with her sister, and they have a very brief conversation. During this conversation, the characters mention how there is this plague in Russia making people go crazy. Not much thought or attention is put into that, so they leave to go to the hospital to check up on Bullock's baby. Minutes later, in the hospital after checking up on Bullock's character's baby, they see a girl banging her head on a glass window killing herself. A couple of seconds later, Sandra Bullock mentions, after not really paying attention to the news story about this plague in Russia, declares that the plague has arrived in America. A couple of seconds later, an explosion happens and then Bullock's sister kills herself due to the plague. All of this happens in the first 12 minutes of the film. If you thought this paragraph was annoying to read, with so many things happening one after the other, that's because this was the first 12 minutes of this film. We never get attached to Bullock's sister, things happen so quickly you have no idea what is going on, and all these crazy events happening in the span of 12 minutes lets nothing marinate to the audience. Instead of taking its time to set anything up, such as in other great apocalyptic films like Children of Men, they just get to the point with no weight attached to anything that is going on.

What makes the editing worse is that this film is one of the most visually bland and uncreative films in a long time. It is by no means visually bad, but it is so painfully average. No great visuals, no creative use of colors or placement of objects and characters--nothing. In a film where the characters need to cover their eyes from the monster, you would think there would be a lot of creative shots and sequences to showcase the characters fear; maybe trying to keep us in the dark along with the characters themselves. Maybe making the film visually claustrophobic, showcasing how the characters probably feel that way with the blindfolds on. Well, that is what a good creative film would do. This, however, is not one of those types of films.

One sequence in particular, where the characters have to drive to a store to get some supplies, had such great set up for a visually scary and tense scene; yet, the film lets that down. They cover the windows of the car and only use the GPS in order to not see the thing that is causing everyone to kill themselves. So, how do they film this sequence? Do they solely focus the camera inside the car, trying to pull us in with how the characters are feeling? Nope. This scene is shot in the same style as when Bullock's sister drove away from the hospital. Just shots outside of the car, some shots inside, sweeping shots when they pass through something, and some reaction shots. Why? Why are these two totally different scenes with totally different purposes in emotions and style, shot the exact same way? This is just lazy and bland visual storytelling.

These, however, would not be as big of a problem if we had some good characters to latch on too. Yet, we don't have any good characters in this film. Every character we meet have nothing interesting about them; they are essentially cliches. We have the one asshole character, who opposes giving aid to anyone. We have the super nice strong guy, who is always willing to lend a hand and willing to have the forced romance with the main female character with. We have the weird hippy guy who writes novels about the end of the world and how he theorized this will happen. These are cliches that we have seen in nearly every other bad film in the past. We get maybe one scene where we hear one story about these character's lives prior to this outbreak, and that is about it. Even if they were cliches, if the writers gave us a decent backstory to these characters, then at least we could be somewhat attached to them. However, not only do these characters not have any interesting personality or backstory, but they are all cliches. They did the bare minimum when it came to characters.

They also did the bare minimum in terms of giving us an overall theme of the film. Maybe I did not pay attention that much, but I really did not see an overall theme put throughout the film. Some say it could be about the difficulties of motherhood...but I did not see that at all. Without providing a good theme, the monsters in the film seem pointless. What is the point of a monster making people kill themselves if there is no relation to an overall theme or to a specific character's plight? Imagine, for instance, if in The Babadook, the monster in that film did not represent depression. It would make the film a lot more boring and less entertaining. In that film, the monster representing depression relates to the overall theme of the main character's depression and her battling to combat her depression. Bird Box, however, doesn't do any of that. The monsters are just monsters, every event happens and there is no big theme attached to any action or character in this film.

Overall, This film is such a disappointment. Not because I had any hopes or expectations when going into the film, but rather, because seeing what Netflix could and have done in terms of original content lately, and seeing this cliche-ridden film get so much attention just baffles me. When you have films like Roma, a film telling a personal story about a family, a film that gets you emotionally invested in the characters plights and hardships; or films like Annihilation, a film that talks about humanity and biology and is one of the most visual and haunting films in a long time, seeing Bird Box get so much attention is just disappointing. Bird Box has nothing going for it. Sure, Bullock is decent and there are like 3 decently shot scenes, but this is a film that is just so forgettable and boring. Skip this one

Score: 2/10

Black Mirror Bandersnatch Review

A creative Gimmick that, while fun, does not help mitigate the bland and empty story.

Netflix's new Black Mirror episode, Bandersnatch, is an interesting one. It is a choose-your-own-adventure episode about someone reading a choose-your-own-adventure novel, who then wants to make a choose-your-own-adventure video game, who then feels like he is not in control of his own actions. This episode could have been a mess, it could have failed in so many ways. It could have had little differences in any of the multiple endings, it could have had choices that do not affect the story in meaningful ways, and it could have just been a test demo for Netflix's future projects. However, while this is by no means an amazing episode, mostly due to a bland story and some of the aspects of choosing the choices not being as exciting, the gimmick of making decisions for the character in the episode can be really fun, especially when you're doing it with other people.

The story is somewhat basic at first. The protagonist, Stefan Butler, loves this book called the Bandersnatch; a choose-your-own-adventure novel. In loving this book so much, he uses his computer skills to make a video game based off of that novel. Then, the lines between reality and game seem to blur, as the character starts to lose control over his actions, as we the viewer start to take control of his actions.

The decision making aspect of this story is pretty easy to follow and comprehend. You have a ten-second timer and two decisions to make. You choose whichever one you want and then you are taken wherever the story takes you. Pretty simple stuff that Netflix de-briefs you right before starting the episode itself to get you ready for how to play. The episode's decisions start out simple. For example, the first decision you make, a seemingly pointless one at first, is choosing which cereal to eat for breakfast. As time passes however, the decisions will become grander and more relevant to which ending you get. Won't spoil anything here, but there are some interesting, outlandish and funny (in the Black Mirror dark humor sort of way) choices you make throughout the story. Every choice you make does matter in how the story progresses, and it can lead to some interesting and crazy outcomes.

The crazy story narratives are aided by great performances and visuals. Everyone, even the side characters your barely get to know or see, play their roles with such great dedication and enjoyment. With the different branching narratives, some of the characters personalities and personas change drastically throughout, and they all seem to mesh well with one another. All the acting was believable and everyone seemed to have fun in their roles.

In terms of visuals, Black Mirror has always boasted some really visually stunning episodes. San Junerpino and Nosedive being some of the highlights for me in terms of visuals. Bandersnatch, while not as good as those two previous episodes mentioned in terms of visuals, does have some pretty good visuals. There are some good long takes at times, some good use of CGI, and good use of colors that help add depth to each scene. Nothing amazing, but having good visuals for some Television Shows is something that should be mentioned.

Yeah, it is a pretty fun episode; however, while I have been praising it, there really is nothing that special once you get past the choose-your-own-adventure aspect. The story itself is pretty forgettable. Not a whole lot happens at first, and while it does go off the wall in some ways, it was just a very meh story. Nothing awful, nothing amazing. As with every Black Mirror episode, there is a theme or a commentary about technology and society that runs throughout the entire episode. In this episode, the theme is clearly about free-will. I say clearly because it is extremely on the nose. The occasional talk about free-will and determinism can be pretty hilarious. This episode is very self-referential, with characters asking questions like "why am I not in control of my actions?" to some characters having monologues about the idea of free-will and predestination. I chuckled a couple of times knowing that the writers knew that they should not take themselves too seriously. However, while it was funny, past being funny there was nothing else added with the themes. You will not have a discussion about whether or not humans have free will or what free will actually means. While that is fine, not every episode needs to have that a deep philosophical argument at the end, at times the talking and the monologues about free will can get a bit annoying. Once the joke wears off, there is really nothing else of substance when it comes to these discussions in the story.

However, outside of the bland story elements, some of the choosing elements of this episode is pretty mixed. Sometimes, based on what you choose, the episode will tell you to choose where you want to go back in terms of re-doing some of the choices you made. It's basically having someone telling "yeah you messed up so go fix it." That's fine, and maybe I just made dumb decisions, but to be repeatedly forced to do that was a bit annoying. It could have just kept going with whatever decision I made and either have that as an ending or, have more story parts to continue based on that decision. Sure, that might take forever to do, but it is still an annoyance.

In terms of the multiple endings, I got nearly all of them replaying some of the decisions over again and seeing where they would lead me. The novelty of choosing your decision does wear off after a while, and once it does, the overall package does as well. At a point, you really will not care about how the story ends. Sure, you will want to complete it to get all the endings, but that is pretty much it. It was more of an obligation for me to check off all the endings, rather than me being totally invested and wanting to find out where the different decisions will take me.

Overall, this was a fun episode. It was nothing amazing, but the element of choosing how the story plays out gives so much possibility for Netflix and other streaming channels to experiment more with telling a story. Now, I hope that this does not happen to every show out there; I do not want Fargo season 4 to have a choose-your-own-adventure episode. But, I feel that for some shows, episodic shows like Black Mirror, it can work decently. While there were other Netflix shows that have done this before, such as Netflix's Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale, none have gone this far into creating such a fun experience and a showcase of what can be done. That is exactly what this episode was; a fun experience being a showcase for what can be done for the future. Past that, however, in terms of story and even in terms of how far this could be taken, there really is nothing amazing about this episode. But it was very fun and something I will probably go back into with some friends or family just to see the different endings and choices.

Score: 7/10