Kendall Gregg

“Drop” is a solid 7/10 movie. For a movie that took place is only 2 locations, it did a great job keeping me engaged. 95% of the movie is in a tiny boujee restaurant; and it keeps you in detective mode, trying to piece together who might be the mastermind behind what the main character is going through. You easily develop your own list of suspects and when the reveal happens you kind of get a “Ah, okay” moment (nothing shocking or revolutionary, but you see it making sense). The only con to me, really, was the final action scene at the house (the OTHER location in 5% of the movie). Too many of the typical dramatic pauses and really hard to forgive weird decisions on the ‘bad guys’ part; it’s all a sort of Tom and Jerry back and forth because of it. BUT, as a hidden pro to this scene, it captures the realistic strength difference between men and women VERY well. I don’t condone man on woman violence; but for a while now, movies have shown women being able to easily go toe to toe with trained, violent, murderous men (actors of course). It was shocking, and refreshing, to see a more realistic representation of strength difference between men and women; especially since it allows opportunity’s for the woman to win in ways that are creative and more focused in out smarting the man. Definitely a good thriller movie.

It’s a visually beautiful movie; but the story is extremely incoherent and you’re not really presented with a reason to even care about any of the characters. The motivations behind the characters don't make sense or aren’t explained. There’s no level of world building; you’re introduced to new things, nonstop, without any kind of information being acknowledged or clarified. There are things that I assume myself once they’re presented, which turn out to be correct; but those things just get nonchalantly confirmed at rapid fire at the very end. By the end, you’re really just left wondering what you’re supposed to feel about the movie. Nothing makes sense, nothing is really solved, nothing is explained, and nothing is achieved.

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.