To put it simply: Bird Box isn’t bad... but it’s also not ‘Good’. My girlfriend said it was a great movie and we had to watch it, so we did; and by the end of it I came to a realization:
If you’re like my girlfriend (emotion driven), the type of person who takes a film at surface value, and takes in individual scenes as their own stand alone moments, then you’ll like Bird Box.
If you’re like me (logic driven), someone who takes in each element a film presents, applies logic and reason to events happening (real world logic as well as in film world logic), and you like to have your questions answered to some degree by the end, then you’re not gonna like Bird Box.
There are plenty of suspenseful moments, but that’s all the movie boils down to. Individual events that are compelling as stand alone moments. As a whole, everything feels like it’s sewn together by ‘something’ that is never explained and that leaves a logical thinker saying, “Okay, but why is this happenig?”
There are ways to leave the audience wondering while still feeding them a little bit of information; but this movie gives you ‘Nothing’ to apply reason to. It’s a movie with a protagonist but no antagonist other than “Hark! There’s Evil Afoot!” You’re never given insight to “Who or What” the evil is, “Why and How” the evil is here, or “Where” evil came from.
Even without knowing what the ‘Evil’ is by the end of tbe movie, a logical thinker is still gonna find the ending unsatisfactory. It’s not a resolution, by any means. All the same issues from the start of the movie are still present. The reward in the end is a, “Good job, you made it; but did anything that happened change or accomplish anything at all?”
So to simplify again:
Emotional Person - “Okay, there’s evil! Run from it! Yay, they got away from it!”
Logical Person - “Okay, there’s evil. Who’s the evil? What’s the evil? Where’s the evil? Why is the evil? Did the movie just end without telling me ANY of these basic questions?!”
My personal score and take away:
5/10
Not a bad movie. Not a good movie. 2 hours of my day are gone and I haven’t mentally gained or lost anything because of this movie. It ultimately just felt pointless to watch.