Bird Box Movie Is This Decade's The Happening, But With An Actual Villain

CBR

Bird Box Is This Decade's The Happening - Only With a Proper Villain

By Renaldo Matadeen

Published Dec 27, 2018

Netflix's Bird Box takes is lead from M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, but makes one major addition -- a true antagonist.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Bird Box, streaming now on Netflix.

While director M. Night Shyamalan has quality works to his credit with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, he also has more than his fair share of duds. The Last Airbender and After Earth are only two examples, but the film that arguably began that downward trajectory is the 2008 post-apocalyptic thriller The Happening.

Poorly received, the film details a mysterious pandemic that inexplicably causes mass suicides across the globe. Fast-forward a decade, and Netflix's Bird Box bears an uncanny resemblance to that Shyamalan flop, only this time, director Susanne Bier makes her emotional thriller stand out delivering a key element The Happening lacked -- a proper antagonist.

Make no mistake, Bier's film -- an adaption of Josh Malerman's 2014 novel -- draws influence from The Happening, as both depict a mysterious force that causes people to bring the end of days upon themselves. While The Happening was intriguing on paper, it failed spectacularly in execution. And most of that came down to its "villain," which turned out to be ... trees. The world's flora decided to emit killer toxins to greatly reduce the human population. That revelation removed all suspense, and was so laughable that audiences awaited another, more coherent, twist that would expose the true culprit. However, it never came, and The Happening was reduced to little more than a punchline.

Bird Box introduces a similar premise, but scrubs the suicide-by-plant gimmick and instead goes straight for the jugular by creating an unseen antagonist that scares the characters to death. It appears as an invisible specter, convincing the people who lay eyes upon it in daylight to jump in front of cars, leap off rooftops, shoot themselves in the head, and so on. But what makes this ghoul so effective is that the way it manifests differs from person to person.

For instance, it adopts a peaceful approach with the elderly, leading them to believe it's an angel calling them to the light. They indulge, not realizing it's probably the angel of death. But it might drive paranoid or violent people crazy, causing them to commit suicide. The non-religious even believe it's aliens, highlighting how each attack manifests differently. Some people hear voices of dead loved ones, and others think the entity is emitting beastly screams. In other words, Bird Box's antagonist keeps viewers on edge because its method of confrontation is unpredictable.

While most of its attacks are mental, the supernatural entity also extends itself to the physical plane by corrupting some humans, who in turn seek others and draw them out of hiding, so they can lay eyes on the creature and become infected.

They become members of a cult who act as the entity's disciples, doing its dirty work while demonstrating the monster has a complex plan -- that it's not merely responding to stimulus, or to danger, as in The Happening.

Streaming on Netflix, director Susanne Biers' Bird Box stars Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, Jacki Weaver, Rosa Salazar, Danielle Macdonald, Lil Rel Howery, Tom Hollander, BD Wong, Sarah Paulson, Colson Baker and John Malkovich.