About Bird Box
Sometimes works of fiction hit the nail in the head when it comes to expressing deep fears and emotions with the right metaphors. In such cases, the meaning reveals itself in their lasting impression, in the feelings and moods the work aroused in us. The right analysis takes the work as an intense dream after we are awaken, in which the premise only serves to bind together the medley of deep REM-stage emotions, and the plot are our coping mechanisms.
This analysis contains all the spoilers, even in the movie stills.
Motherhood
Bird Box reveals a person estranged and alienated from social interaction, actively detaching herself from loved ones. We learn that her partner abandoned her with an unwanted pregnancy, and she had a rough childhood under an abusive father. Her pregnancy is the catalyst which forces her to breach her walls to reach for people, confronting her deep faceless terrors, “taking the form of person’s worst fear.”
Allegorically, whomever sees that darkness –the darkness she fears in herself– will “leave her” and disappear from her life, as if dead. It happened with her partner, and we see it happening with her sister, her last bridge to society. The word outside her comfort zone is that of devastation, chaos, people running for their lives. She briefly finds safety in a small group of people inside a house, and is safe as long as she keeps her eyes shut to the world.
The blindfold is the leitmotif of this story, along with the bird box which signifies shelter. Malory is the bird, she even wears a feathery blue coat, and is visually associated with the color blue across scenes.
She could be safe if it wasn’t for the damned and corrupted –mostly all men– who want to defile her into darkness. They have embraced the terror and serve it. Her dynamic is twofold: the nurturing “leave her,” while attracting the abusive into her life. Tom, her partner during her struggle is a positive figure who also ends up “leaving her.”
The most direct metaphor for Malory’s experience with motherhood is that of navigating downstream a river (blindly) with her two children, whom in a sign of detachment hasn’t even named: “boy,” “girl.” She wrestles with aggressors, and provides food and a warming blanket. She claims that every choice she made is for them. The journey finally forces her to face her fears in a climactic scene, in which she finally embraces motherhood, hugging and apologizing to her children. This is when the character develops, and we promptly find her in a warm indoor commune of people, who we see are well bonded and helping each other. They accept her into them.
She undoes her blindfold and releases the birds, which fly to other birds just as the children run to meet other children for the first time. She then smiles, relieved.
Ideology
The corrupted and damned are also impressions of “the other,” who we see as evil and abusive. People who “saw” some kind of ideology and switch to an opposing sides. We demonize, tag, and associate them with evil. Under this interpretation the demon is an ideology, sweeping across continents and decimating civilizations. The current cultural climate is incredibly tense, one can argue that we’re even experiencing a civil war.
“Seeing” the monster is akin to letting go of any intellectual resistance and accepting an ideological brainwash. The blindfold represents is a constant struggle against a stream which drives the undoctrinated away into underground cliques.
Apocalypse
The event on which the story begins is an apocalypse, which in greek means “uncovering, revealing.” This is more evident in this movie than in with the usual zombie plot device, a worn out genre to which Bird Box belongs. Modern zombie movies are about a man-made virus gone wrong, symbol of technological-scientific hubris which brings a plague, not unlike a greek tragedy in which an arrogant king angers the gods. Older zombie movies (George A. Romero, Lucio Fulci) are about an actual rise-of-the-dead due to voodoo black magic.
Bird Box brings back the metaphysical element, repressed in modern times. All things repressed grows into a demon, a darkness which is not the absence of light but an entity itself. A formless void which looms across the collective unconscious.
Apocalyptic stories are about a cleansing (which Bird Box mentions), a purge, a return to authenticity. Initially, on day zero, a motley of quarreling survivors hide in suburban basements with a shotgun, to later forage for food with a working car. But eventually, after some losses and an “x years later” overlay, we see them wearing rags and living in wooden sheds with no electricity in the country, or in an urban wabi-sabi, as a temporary stop in a larger journey. This would suffice if it wasn’t for the evil and dammned who push them further into a final utopia, exclusivelly for the protagonist and their kids.
The genre has the following stages: 1. a status-quo in which we meet the characters, often tagging along life with their flaws 2. a cataclysm destroys the world in a matter of hours, return to essentials 3. the story of struggling survivors, some of them traitors, some of them sacrifice themselves, and finally (after catharsis) 4. the arrival to utopia.
Apocalyptic stories are thus about release and utopia. The world has ended, society has been dissolved, and among the remaining some are damned and some are saved.
Of course utopia is utterly oversimplified. We’re presented some glimpses of a nice day, smiles, and end credits roll. Imagine having the character still standing there after the credits end, walking around awkwardly until given chores, a bunk bed with other people, and sometimes being required to leave the commune to get supplies and food. Utopia, in greek, is “no place.”
