Bird Box Review: 4 Ups & 4 Downs

1. The Intimate, Small Scale World-Building

When the first trailer dropped for this movie, you'd be forgiven for assuming it had a pretty sizeable budget in the $50-70 million range. After all, Netflix splashed $90 million on Bright, so why not something similar on a new Sandra Bullock movie?

Shockingly enough, Bird Box only cost $20 million to make, which while looking at the end product is frankly staggering, to say nothing of the salaries commanded by the ensemble cast alone.

There are a few smart decisions Bier makes to keep the budget down, though. For starters, the movie's overall style and mood are both incredibly intimate, focused on small human moments of hope and despair rather than a giant, worldwide canvas with colossal, city-destroying set-pieces.

Large chunks of the movie are in fact confined to a single house location, and most of the other sets clearly didn't cost much to rustle together.

Bier also sensibly refuses to show the audience the entities responsible for the mass suicides, meaning there's no requirement for complex and expensive visual effects.

Even so, it's a handsomely mounted, impressive project given its low price tag, and with a budget so scant, it's able to focus on the aching desperation to endure rather than schlocky action sequences.

What did you think of Bird Box? Shout it out in the comments!