It is also foreshadowing the kind of survivor and mother Malorie will become.īird Box is less articulate in its exploration of post-apocalyptic motherhood. ![]() In one of the film’s best moments, Malorie picks up a shotgun and aims it at the first new stranger who asks to come into the relative safety of the house, surprising both us and her fellow houseguests. She is more than a symbol of the future we are trying to preserve. Malorie is one of two pregnant characters in the film (the other played by rising star Danielle MacDonald, recently seen in Netflix’s Dumplin’), and the two distinct characters have very different relationships to the concept of motherhood and pregnancy. Past that, the way other characters respond to Malorie as a pregnant woman is not divorced from the additional, protective consideration pregnant women (especially white, well-groomed pregnant women) often get in our society, but, because Malorie is the protagonist, she isn’t defined by that consideration. Refreshingly, Bird Box gives a much more complex depiction of pregnancy and motherhood. Traditionally when pregnant women show up on screen, especially in stories like this one, they are solely a plot device and/or a symbol of the future we are trying to preserve. They are characters to be protected or saved. Not only do pregnant women rarely get to do the saving, they often don’t even get to have a fully-developed perspective on the end of the world. A classic example of this is in Children of Men, in which young, black mother Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) is sidelined to tell a story about motherhood, fertility, and immigration from white male martyr Theo’s (Clive Owens) point-of-view.įurther reading: Bird Box Creatures Explained Pregnant, middle-aged artist Malorie is far from the burly, muscled men or even young, stoic teen girls we usually see making it through the apocalypse or dystopia. This is where most of Bird Box‘s strong supporting cast comes into play, with John Malkovich, Rosa Salazar, Danielle MacDonald, Lil Rel Howery, BD Wong, Jacki Weaver, Tom Hollander, and Taylor Handley all playing morally complex and unpredictable variables thrown into this end-of-the-world social scenario. Through this mini, end-of-the world morality play, the audience is left to imagine where they might fall on the scale of self-serving to community-oriented when faced with the end of the world.īird Boxalso ets a lot of steam from a subversion of how we generally imagine survivors in our mainstream stories. The flashback narrative soon settles into a character-driven horror as Malorie becomes part of a group of survivors barricaded inside one Sacramento home. Oh yeah, and they have to do it blindfolded.įurther reading: Interview with Bird Box Director Susanne Bier Its frame tale follows Malorie and her two children, named Girl and Boy, in the post-apocalypse as they attempt to make the dangerous 20-mile trek down a river to a sanctuary promised by a voiceover in a walkie-talkie. It brings us movies like Netflix’s Bird Box, an adaptation of the 2014 novel by Josh Malerman which in turn provides Danish director Susanne Bier ( The Night Manager) and lead actor Sandra Bullock a chance to tell a different kind of genre survival story than we’re used to seeing in the mainstream. A cross between Room and A Quiet Place, Bird Box follows mother Malorie (Bullock) as she works to keep her children alive in a world in which the human population has been decimated by an unseen supernatural force that preys on sight, sending those who see it into an urgently suicidal state.Īdapted for the screen by Eric Heisserer ( Lights Out, Arrival), Bird Box is both a tale of apocalypse and a post-apocalyptic drama. While this era of #PeakContent may be overwhelming, it’s also an incredible gift.
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