Bird Box Review: 4 Ups & 4 Downs

3. The Intense, Unnerving Atmosphere

While Bier is working with over-familiar material for the most part and her direction here certainly isn't among her finest, she nevertheless does a mostly respectable job wringing sufficient tension out of the past and present survival scenarios (especially the former).

Bier is a deeply humanist filmmaker, so it makes sense that she's at her strongest when focusing on the anguish of these people trying to survival amid horrific circumstances.

With the source and exact nature of the supernatural phenomenon never being much explained, audiences are invited to use the very same imagination as the frequently-blindfolded characters.

The result is a heightened intensity, and with several name actors unexpectedly dying fairly early in the movie, Bier is able to establish an "all bets are off" tenor before the first act is done with.

Does this carry all the way to the end of Bird Box? Sadly not quite, but almost.