I hope everyone had a fun Halloween and things got a little scary or creepy. As an occasional tradition, I like to pick out a few scary movies to watch around this time. However, as I’ve said before, I am a chicken when it comes to truly gory or malevolent horror. I am satisfied with a little creepiness and tension without being traumatized to the point of being unable to sleep for weeks. So, I ended up picking out a trilogy of films (all available on Netflix) which happened to be set in the recently post-apocalyptic but where the thing that destroys us is monsters that we can only protect ourselves from by giving up one of our senses (I know, I was surprised this was a trend too, and that Netflix was such a supporter). The three movies (Bird Box, A Quiet Place, and The Silence) are incredibly similar, but I’m glad that I watched them in that sequence, because Bird Box was definitely the best, and The Silence was OK until the end, when it became ridiculously bad.

Bird Box

The movie starts out mysteriously with Sandra Bullock blindfolded, with two blindfolded young children. She is taking them somewhere, and they have to follow her instructions without removing their blindfolds — it seems pretty important. We flash back to five years earlier when Bullock’s character Malorie was pregnant. After a doctor visit, everything starts to go badly, with chaos everywhere. People are going insane and killing themselves. Apparently it was something they saw. A lot of this movie is spent locked in a house with a few other survivors that Malorie finds. There’s a nice variety of characters, including John Malkovich as a (you guessed it) mean, misanthropic curmudgeon. The survivors need to get supplies and deal with other survivors, etc., in a set of typically post-apocalyptic episodes, all while making sure that they don’t look outside. We also cut to present-day Malorie, trying to navigate down a river with two blindfolded kids, all the while feeling intense dread over what will happen if they see the thing they should not see.

The survivor characters were interesting enough. Malkovich and Bullock gave performances that were way above the others’. The episodes and experiences were a bit typical, so there was a bit of eye-rolling and frustration for me as a viewer, but I really felt the tension in those scenes where Malorie and the kids are trying to get down-river. Plus there was a lot more uncertainty about what would happen there. It made me really care about Malorie and these children (who don’t even have names!). I enjoyed the flashes back and forward and how they filled in the blanks of the backstory. It made a relatively predictable story a lot more interesting. Of these three movies, I would definitely recommend Bird Box. (4 out of 5)

A Quiet Place

While very similar, this movie was obviously not one about sight, but about sound instead. This time round, the creatures are blind but hear very well; and if they hear you, they’re going to kill you. Simple, no? One big difference is that this story focuses on a single family (who appear to be farmers): John Krasinski and Emily Blunt (one of my favourite celebrity couples) play the parents, and they have three kids, with one more on the way (Yes, again the female lead is pregnant). While we are obviously given the classic episodes of the group crossing into dangerous areas to get supplies, and the family holed up in their home as the creatures lay siege, there are also many scenes of family members interacting (and since they don’t speak, it’s an interesting tableau experience). Because this film deals with the absence of sound, it can really examine how we’d feel without it (there are even purely silent scenes where we get the perspective of the elder daughter who is deaf) and how we’d cope in a world without sound. Obviously that’s more difficult in Bird Box, where we can only briefly experience the loss of sight, since no one wants to watch a movie with nothing to see.

I think Krasinski and Blunt are two of the most likeable actors around, so I really connected with their characters. However, I found the overall plot a bit poorly-paced because for the first half there were a lot of those quiet, tableau-postcard moments that kind of dragged; but then at the climax when it’s humans vs creatures, it’s a lot of fast action. We also get a few moments that seem inspired by Spielberg (I mean those times when teenage characters put everyone in danger by caring more about their own petty issues than whatever super-natural situation is going on). The script was not as well-crafted as Bird Box, but overall it was still pretty enjoyable. Nevertheless, I still can’t understand this movie being nominated for awards, or that there is going to be a sequel. Maybe I’ll watch that next Halloween. (3.5 out of 5)

The Silence

At first I could not get over how this movie was so similar to the others (and I didn’t understand why Netflix would fund another one when they already had the very successful Bird Box in their collection). Lifting its basic concept (though I’ll emphasize the word “basic”) from movies like A Quiet Place, this time around, it’s a plague of sharp-fanged, flappy, bat-winged nasties that swarm upon anything they can hear (since they can’t see). I’m not sure how that factor alone can allow them to destroy America in days, but so it does. Kiernan Shipka and Miranda Otto (who both also appear on Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina — much better entertainment to watch on Halloween) play mother and daughter. Shipka’s character Ally is also deaf (which comes in handy because it means that the family all know how to communicate using sign language — though they spend a surprising amount of time whispering). As they watch the news about the onslaught of the blind creatures across the eastern seaboard, they decide to drive away somewhere. The story is full of holes, so I’m not going to really get much into the plot. Stanley Tucci plays the father and he’s not bad, though this character is hardly much of a stretch for Tucci (who you may recall as Caesar Flickerman from the Hunger Games movies).

The movie is less concerned with the family relationships than A Quiet Place, but there are also a lot of silly obstacles thrown at them, including the last quarter of the movie where things go downhill very fast. I won’t give away any spoilers, even though they might save you from watching this movie. Suffice it say some other post-apocalyptic tropes come into play, and absolutely don’t fit with this movie either tonally or logically (after all, it’s only been a few days as far as we know. How could things have gotten so bad?) It feels like the writers/filmmakers did not know how to tie up this story, so they quickly tried to end things with a ridiculous plot turn. Suffice it to say, this movie was neither scary nor thrilling. (2 out of 5)

As interesting as it may be to imagine being forced to give up one of our senses, I’m not sure it makes a sustainable story device for a thriller or sci-fi movie. Throughout all three movies, I kind of watched with a knot in my stomach much of the time. After watching these three, I am a bit concerned for the upcoming Apple TV+ series See, which imagines how after the apocalypse humans have lost our sense of sight, and how we cope and survive.