Last night I finally made the time to watch the much squawked about Netflix apocalyptic monster flick,
Bird Box (2018). I won't go into a major dissertation on the problems I have with movies whose monsters have undefinable abilities and origins, who seem to appear and disappear at the behest of the scriptwriter. What I do want to talk about is how this movie seems to be connecting to the same zeitgeist as, and in a similar way to, last year's horror breakout
A Quiet Place (2018).
Both films see human civilization wiped out, reduced to a subsistence existence after the invasion of unknown monsters. In order to survive, we have to give up our most basic of senses:
In Quiet you can't speak or make sound;
Bird Box makes seeing deadly.
I'm not proposing that
Bird Box is a big ol' copycat. I think these two films are tapping into our current political/social anxieties. How do you survive in a world where speaking out doesn't help- or even worse, makes you a target? Seeing is dangerous when our leaders lie to our faces on our big screen TVs- or worse, the very media that is supposed to show us the "truth" manipulates what we see for ratings and political power.
In these two dark mirror films, we must close our mouths and our eyes to survive. I know I've had to stop watching the news and refrain from speaking up on social media posts that will result in my blood pressure skyrocketing. There is so much that is horrific in the world right now, it sometimes feels like the only way to get through it in one sane piece is to close our eyes and keep quiet.
At the center of both films we also have pregnant women who struggle to keep their families, and themselves safe. In fact, the actual births of the children endanger- or kill others. There is something perverse about watching two heroines make the choice to bring babies into these bloodcurdling worlds at any cost. Perhaps the filmmakers intend these newborns to be symbols of hope and the indefatigability of the human race.
I question why anyone would want to have children in these environments in the first place. What kind of life is it where children aren't allowed to see or speak or they die- in really awful ways? Not to mention that in both movies, the kids' very existence threatens that of the mother and those around her.
The spectre of abortion haunts these films- it is the unspoken answer of what to do when having a baby is a really bad idea. I'm not sure that's intentional-
Quiet avoids overtly mentioning the "A" word and
Bird Box only offers options like adoption in a pre-apocalypse OBGYN visit. But horror movies that tap into our cultural dilemmas are often so effective because they aren't overt.
In the world outside the movie theater, we've recently witnessed a spate of state laws passed that limit a woman's right to choose- even in cases of incest and rape. Birth no matter what. The residual dread and bodycount of
A Quiet Place and
Bird Box seem to question that premise.
