Bird Box Review: 4 Ups & 4 Downs
3. The Frustrating Plot Structure
One of the biggest issues with the movie is its awkward, frustrating narrative structure.
The film opens with protagonist Malorie (Bullock) venturing off on a perilous mission down-river with her two young children, and within minutes, we're flung back five years prior to where the suicidal epidemic began to ravage the world.
Unfortunately the past sequences are so much more compelling than the fairly bland present-day survival story, and the only real suspense lies in learning the predictable means through which these the past feeds into the present.
Bier violently keeps cutting back to Malorie and her kids in the now and it infuriatingly rips the audience out of the decidedly more intriguing past survival scenario.
Obviously screenwriter Eric Heisserer (Arrival) is working from the source novel here, but even so, perhaps the plot layout needed to be re-worked somewhat to function effectively in movie form.
A more straight-forward structure without a relentless back-and-forth likely would've proved far more engaging.