She repeatedly says that she is the one who will decide which it will be. Once the river turns into potentially lethal rapids Mallory coldly informs them that one of the children is going to have to take off their blindfold and navigate. But there are some gloriously heart-wrenching moments with them. This is understandable given the young ages of the actors. The children, simply named ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’ by Mallory, have very little to do rather than just be vessels for rescue and protection. And as the movie progresses the time frame jumps back and forth from these holed up survivors and the danger fraught river crossing that Mallory and the two children are making. When a desperate and dishevelled Hollander is let in to the house half way through, his haunted features add a fresh injection of ‘outside’ to the cooped up residents. Rhodes’ nice guy under pressure angle mixes well with Bullock’s hard edge pragmatism. This is a problem that many movies of this genre have: the need to group survivors together and then pick them off as time passes. There is one quick panicked conversation where they all seem to immediately figure out the rules for survival but beyond this virtually no-one grows beyond their one note template established early on. That said, it is a shame that most of them don’t get a lot to do. There is Rosa Salazar ( The Maze Runner), Lil Rey Howery ( Get Out) and Trevante Rhodes ( Mike).Īlongside them are more established fare like the permanently sour John Malkovich or oft comedy foil of Tom Hollander (although definitely not comedy here). The casting in Bird Box lashes together many popular actors you’ve seen in other recent movies. Mallory takes shelter in the first house that is available and finds herself surrounded by a disparate cast of people stuck in a similar situation. The chaotic stampede ensues and it becomes clear that people are seeing things that drive them to take their own lives.

Her flippant remarks bounce across the few opening scenes before, in typical zombie movie fashion, the ‘mass suicides’ covered on news reports start happening around her.

After the initial scene, the timeline flashes back 5 years where Mallory (Bullock’s character) is pregnant but ignoring it.

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