Bird Box

Bird Box, written by Josh Malerman, is a post-apocalyptic horror novel about a world where people, haunted by unfathomable creatures, cannot open their eyes when they go out on the streets, lest they go mad and commit suicide. The book, however, is not able to take advantage of the potential of this premise, failing to present captivating characters and to construct scenes packed with tension.

The protagonist is called Malorie, a woman who finds herself pregnant precisely on the day in which humanity is attacked by mysterious monsters on the streets.: every person who looks at them goes mad and kills themselves. With her eyes closed, Malorie leaves desperately for a house that is being advertised as a refuge, discovering other survivors. Years later, however, she finds herself alone again, having to raise two children, and decides to flee with them to a safer place, traveling blindly by a river.

Much of the narrative focuses on the group the protagonist meets in the refuge, led by the charismatic professor Tom. Working with the dynamic between these individuals – who are basically trapped in a closed chamber – Malerman tries to show how the human mind is susceptible to paranoia in stressful situations and how this invariably leads to reckless actions. The author, however, falters when it comes to the most important part of the premise: his characters are simply not interesting enough to warrant any discussion. After all, Malerman presents the reader with a range of figures, which at best can be described as one-dimensional.

Olympia, for example, is the other pregnant woman in the group and her personality is limited to this characteristic. Jules, in turn, is a guy who likes dogs… because he has one; Cheryl becomes angry easily and that is Cheryl; Tom is the “man” of the group, giving everyone a sense of security by making his job to solve the majority of the problems that arise; Don is the unbearable guy with no redeemable traits; and Felix actually stands out, but for achieving the feat of being even simpler than the previous characters, not possessing a single striking feature: Felix is ​​just a name on the page. As Bird Box is full of flat characters confined in a small space, the result couldn’t be any other than disastrous: the reader is stuck with the points of view of very dull individuals, who never go beyond their initial descriptions.

Despite being the protagonist, Malorie is equally flat, only thinking two things during the whole novel: she is either worried about her children’s health or is lamenting that Tom is not there to help her.  Malorie, therefore, can hardly be considered a strong female character, showing time and again that she feels lost without that strong male figure to shield her from everything.

The horror element of the book is as poorly developed as its characters, with the big action scenes always feeling more foolish than terrifying. At the beginning, for example, the author already stumbles with the absurdity of the situations: the rumors that the suicides are being caused by seeing “something strange” have barely begun and instead of there being an initial refusal to such an absurd idea, Malorie already finds a guy putting bandages on his eyes when she visits a pharmacy. Not to mention that, until that moment, the television had not mentioned more than five cases taking place around the entire world.

The monster itself does not fare much better: since those who look at it end up dying before they can reveal anything, its characteristics are kept hidden from the reader. Initially, this works, as it creates a mystery around the creature, besides working with the old idea that human beings fear what they do not know. There are lovecraftian undertones as well, with the element of a monstrous being so frightful that only seeing it causes madness. However, the mystery stretches forever, making this strategy more irritating than efficient: it’s all buildup without payoff – and the lovecraftian side is never fully explored.

In addition, Malerman does not seem to understand – like Shyamalan in The Happening – that the premise creates visually ridiculous situations, such as people driving with their eyes covered by their hands or going out to explore the neighborhood pretending to be blind; scenes that, depending on the tone, could be in a comedy. The author, however, treats these scenes as naturally tense, never attempting to reconstruct them in the reader’s mind.

Not that he would do much better if he tried, since his writing proves to be incredibly problematic. Malerman’s prose is basically composed of short sentences. This leads to a pacing problem due to the countless pauses caused by the frequency of said sentences. Not to mention that this characteristic also causes negative effects in the buildup of tension: normally, authors insert short and simple sentences suddenly in the narrative to create moments of impact that work precisely due to the contrast with the long descriptions that came before. In Bird Box, since the author always writes in small blocks of short clauses, the instants in which such technique would make sense don’t stand out, with the sentences being lost in the middle of so many others.

Malerman also fails in not naming the children the protagonist takes care of, calling them only Boy and Girl. However, that doesn’t work as a commentary on Malorie’s despair: it is not the case that she wants to distance herself from the children with this form of naming, as protecting them appears to be her only goal in life. It would be paradoxical in a nonsensical way. The idea that not giving them common names would help her not feel so much pain in the event of their deaths also doesn’t make much sense, as it doesn’t diminish her affective bond with the children – and she does not appear to want that either, since she keeps fighting to protect them.

Some scenes also lack logic: at one point, for example, the protagonist leaves the house with a dog because she believes the animal will help her to get back to her car safely, guiding her along the way. However, she returns without the dog’s help with extreme ease, never noticing the futility of her initial plan.

In short, Bird Box is a deeply flawed horror novel, with a problematic prose and a narrative devoid of meaning, purpose, or any interesting element.

January 05, 2019.

Originally published in Portuguese on October 21, 2016.