This Review is Going to be Pretty Short: Bird Box

I learned of about the movie “Bird Box” because of Twitter.  I was minding my business scrolling through tweets and I read all the buzz about “Bird Box”.  In the following days I saw “Bird Box” memes all over social media.  The movie was a sensation.  I bought into the nonsense.

I don’t use Netflix so the movie is not available to me so I got a copy of the book when I saw it at the library.  I finished reading “Bird Box” by Josh Malerman over the weekend.  The book is pretty short but it took me a long time to get through it because it was boring.

I was waiting for the plot to build and live up to the social media hype but it never delivered.  Perhaps this is one of those anomalies where the movie is better than the book (like “Divergent”).  I’ll never know because I’ll never spend my time watching “Bird Box”.  I don’t even know how to describe this film; suspense, horror, mystery, science fiction, family drama.  I don’t know because nothing happens.  Seriously nothing happens.

The story is flat the entire time.  The book blindly meanders to an anti climatic ending that just added to the confusion.  I rushed through the ending of the book because I was sick of it but I was tempted to reread it because I couldn’t quite figure out what happened.

It seems like the writer was trying to leave things open ended so he can write a sequel.  However the sequel to watching grass grow would be watching paint dry.  I promise you that no matter where you live you will be more entertained by putting a chair in front of a window at your house and looking outside.

The premise is ridiculous.   I don’t understand what Twitter got so excited about.  I only saw three bad reviews of “Bird Box” one of which came from Cardi B.  Cardi was as confused as I was by the story.  I’m glad I wasn’t alone.

Warning:  This clip contains expletives, racial slurs and general vulgarity.  But she’s not wrong.

I’m mad a Twitter too for getting me to read that.  This is the third time that the media has sold me on a book and it was garbage.  Actually, probably more than that but I digress: 1. “The Host” by Stephenie Meyer.  (It was an unoriginal snoozefest.)  2.  “50 Shades of Grey” by E.L. James (The protagonist made women look stupid because that relationship should have ended very soon after she met Christian.  And the sex scenes in the book are over hyped.  Harlequin romances are kinkier than “50 Shades of Grey” and I was reading those in middle school) and now this.

I wish I could say I’ll never fall for this type of media hype again but I take book and movie recommendations seriously.  What can I say?  I like to stay on top of the trends.  This won’t be the last time I have egg on my face due to buying into hype.  It’s just how I live.