The movie starts off revealing a young brooding typical artist, Malorie, refusing to leave her house because she believes she lacks connection with others and there is no other way to really change that. What the movie doesn't incline to show was the relationship between her and her parents, which through several miniature clues, reveals that she detests her father's way of the world and her mother's choice to abandon her, and her sister, Jessica.
Jessica was the complete opposite of her: optimistic, encouraging, fun, enthusiastic about the world around her. She consistently tries to get Malorie out of the house and tell her otherwise about her goals and dreams. Malorie was pregnant at the beginning of the movie, and the whole introduction to "Bird Box" was just one doctor trip and witnessing the mass suicidal wave of people arriving in their hometown after it had already inhabited Europe and Russia.
I personally enjoyed the movie. It was a perfect allegory of the act of fear and how fear can manipulate people. I thought the significance of the birds was especially clever. The birds in the box were a symbol of protection; that they can guide the people to safety, that they can sense when something devilish is near. In the olden days, birds were a symbol of freedom, of purity, of the all mighty God. Birds were used as messengers, sent to deliver messages or love letters. As unusual as it is, in this movie, something as pure and bright as three birds put into a wooden green box had made it thus far.
Malorie was an exquisite character, for she was the typical human being that every movie producer or scriptwriter wanted to showcase in every protagonist there is. She was standoffish, unwilling to trust, quickly defensive, stubborn, and determined to hide from the world. Her sister, Jessica, was the only person willing to sacrifice her time to help Malorie adjust to the world around her. Whatever pain Malorie had faced in the past, the film didn't want to show, even though it sort of was revealed in her relationship with Tom, her love affair.
Her relationship with Tom was a volcano, she was silent while he was bright and encouraging. He believed in seeing the good in everyone while she was quick to be defensive and say things such as "it is too good to be true." It was one of the things that she regretted when she lost Tom to a mob of psychos. It was clear to see all of Malorie's relationships with people were rocky, it wasn't an exaggeration. The relationship between her kid and her housemate's kid, whom she had promised to protect if something were to happen reveals her nature in which she doesn't know how to get close to people. The kids were five years old, yet she named them Boy and Girl and refused to let them see the world in a different light. Walking around in blindfolds, refusing to look at the creature that would send them to suicide, was their main way of survival.
The reason I believe this movie is the perfect representation of reality is that people tend to avoid what they fear. The monster, or thing, they painted was something that the majority of people did not want to face, for they ran from the creature and used pieces of cloths to protect their eyes with. It was the division between who saw the entity and survived and people who saw the entity and died. The destination at the end that had offered Tom hope earlier in the movie was a utopia in which fear cannot reach, where people of all ages reside in. That was where Malorie truly felt safe, where she gave her children names because there she knew she could give them what they wanted. Unfortunately, this is a portion of reality everyone wants, a destination in which everyone can reside in, without unknown entities that could bother them and pull them away from their happiness.
"Bird Box" very intricately withdrew a sense for people to solely rely on other senses for survival. Unlike "A Quiet Place," another clever horror movie in which people of that nature cannot speak or make noises, or else another entity kills them with a swoop, "Bird Box" never gave a solution to kill off the monsters, but rather reveals a destination in which everyone is protected.
