Netflix’s Bird Box is a Gripping Survival Thriller Deserving of a Theater Release

A trend may be forming as modern dystopian survival films continue to pit families against the supernatural based on a single intrinsic feature. For sound, there was this year’s surprise box office winner in Jon Krasinsky’s A Quiet Place, where the risk of noise meant the threat of your survival. For sight, we now have Danish director Susanne Bier’s Bird Box, based on the 2014 novel by Josh Malerman. And like A Quiet Place, Bird Box places its bets on a mixture of tension based in the unknown and an audience’s love of family resourcefulness. There’s a healthy suspension of curiosity required to enjoy a film like this, as you should expect to have few answers to its most obvious questions. The “why” of it all will buzz like a fly in your ear if you let it, so of course you simply shouldn’t ask and instead operate within its premise: a mysterious thing — biological weapon, demons, aliens — begins to cleanse the world of humanity by instantly compelling a person to commit suicide should they look at it. With little more information than that, Malorie, played by Sandra Bullock, ventures to take her two children from point A to point B in search of a sanctuary where they can live. That’s the third act of the film however, which is sprinkled throughout the movie’s entirety to let us know how the dystopian future will eventually play out. The first two acts of the movie exist five years prior when the outbreak begins, allowing you to play the game of “what would I do if this ridic…