BIG MOVIE
Bird Box064 | W W W. S C I FI N OW.CO.U K
of the emotional beat,” she explains. “I kept
asking myself: ‘What is the focus?’ What is
the focus of the movie? What is the focus of
the character? If you keep that as a mantra
at all times, then you can deal with the
technical challenges or the technical issues,
without getting strayed or seduced by them.”
This is Bier’s fi rst foray into fantastical
genre cinema, but not her fi rst rodeo: a
career spanning almost 30 years is behind
her, and she also brings to the table another
kind of experience that some directors might
not have. “I think having had kids, and
having had them while working, I’ve kind
of trained myself to ask ‘what is the focus?’
and ‘how do I deal with a lot of things at the
same time?’” Bier adds.
In an odd symmetry, this is also what
Sandra Bullock’s Malorie has to do in Bird
Box and like Bier, she pulls it off. “I don’t
think Sandra needs help keeping focus,” Bier
says. “She’s probably one of the most focused
people I’ve ever met. But we did talk a lot
during the course of fi lming. It was a very
creative and stimulating collaboration.” This
is unsurprising, considering the way Malorie
feels like a perfect fi t for the actress.
The “very contemporary female heroine”,
as Bier describes her, gives Bullock an all
too rare opportunity to demonstrate the full
range of her talents. The elements that form
her unique on-screen persona – her poker
face and seriousness, her independence and
air of natural confi dence and strength – have
rarely found a more complete expression
than in Malorie, at once tough and tender,
vulnerable and strong.
Bier is very much aware that, with this
story, the fi lm could have taken a much more
fantastical turn. “I know that other directors
might have gone more into the genre element
of the story, more into the unrealness of it,”
she says. However, the director was anxious
to do justice to her character: “For the
audience to understand what Malorie was
going through and how she got to that point
in life, even the moments of violence and
gore had to feel very real.”
The fi lm indeed features many scenes
where, after seeing the ‘creature’ that drives
people to suicide, entranced characters kill
themselves in whichever is the most direct
and simplest method at their disposal. And
yet, despite this repetition, every occurrence
feels genuinely shocking.
“It was less about being sensational, and
more about being real,” Bier explains. “I
thought the fi lm needed to both embrace the
genre and to stay with Malorie at all times.
To have complete access to her emotions.”
As such, Bier’s unwavering realism allows
Bird Box to fulfi ll its genre credentials, but
also to honour the character’s emotions
and challenges, as well as Bullock’s own
dedicated work.
This style also makes for an often
terrifying fi lm. The enormousness of the
challenge ahead of Malorie as she is about
to embark on her trip in the fi lm’s opening
sequence is nothing short of jaw dropping.
But the fi lm’s gorier and more horror-inspired
central premise also benefi ts from this
commitment to plausibility.
The malevolent creature pushes those
who see it to suicide by taking on the form
of their worst fear, but “how do you depict
anybody’s worst fear?” Bier asks. “That’s got
to be individual; your worst fear is going to
be different from my worst fear. And that’s
why you can’t see it in the fi lm.”
Surviving in that world is a paradoxical
existence where you need to be on the
lookout for the creature, but never look at it;
where you shall never know your worst fear,
but live in fear nonetheless. “I personally
always fi nd a fi lm scarier until I see the
villain or the monster,” Bier adds. “That
moment before is, for me, the most terrifying.
I wanted the movie to be that moment.”
In a world where seeing can be lethal,
beauty takes on a splendour and importance
it did not have before. Bird Box, as terrifying
as it is, is also gorgeous to look at, the visuals
echoing Malorie’s own heightened senses.
“The fi lm needed that sort of dialectic back
and forth between what she’s seeing – which
is nothing, because she’s blindfolded – and
what she’s not,” Bier says. “We wanted
to address what she sees and what she’s
missing out on, so that the audience could
understand what she’s experiencing.” The
director’s allegiance to and care for her
character shines through even in the fi lm’s
quieter, more serene moments, through thefi lm’s visual beauty alone.
“That was part of the striking thing about
that very fi rst image, too,” Bier adds, talking
about the image of Bullock holding the two
children on the fi lm’s poster. “It appears
hostile, and yet beautiful.” Simultaneously
enchanting and terrifying; both a survival
disaster fi lm and a drama, Bier’s Bird Box
sustains the thrill of that image throughout,
until Malorie fi nally sees it through.Bird Box is released on Netfl ix on 21
December.Humanity is forced to confront its worst
fears and reacts accordingly.