Review: Bird Box

Bird Box by Josh Malerman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'M ON THE FENCE.

This is definitely more psychological thriller than horror, which left me a little disappointed. It was eerie and had some super creepy moments but it really lacked the substantial horror I was hoping for!

That being said, it does the psych stuff extremely well.

The entire novel essentially revolves around the subtle horror of being unable to open your eyes. How terrifying the world becomes when you can't see what you're up against, and you're forced to navigate a world completely blind to it. The monster could be right there, and you'd never know. How do you resist opening your eyes??!

Honestly, I wonder how blind people will feel about this book??

Malorie is a great protagonist. She has the ideal blend of bravery and fear to make her a perfectly believable heroine. Her predicament is fascinating, and the sporadic timeline shows us multiple facets of her character in different scenarios. The rest of the housemates are interesting but no one really stood out to me other than Tom and Don.

Let's get spoilery!

(view spoiler)[I didn't like that when the horror came, it was all at once. With this many housemates, I kinda wanted them picked off one by one in shocking and terrifying ways. When their deaths came, it was kinda disappointingly vague and abrupt.

Dog deaths!! WHAT! Nothing hurts my heart more than animals dying in books. Poor Victor. But what happened to the second husky, anyway? And the birds??!

Why was Gary immune? I kinda hate ambiguous books like this where there's no proper, satisfying explanations. I get that it's all about how humans act under terrible circumstances, but if you go so far as to give us 'creatures' then surely we can have a little more explanation? Please??

Also can we just take a minute to appreciate how hilarious the whole situation must have been for Gary, watching everyone stumble around with blindfolds, running into things all the time. What a laugh.

I'm so curious about the rest of the world, too.

The whole time the gang was in the boat I wondered why they didn't do their peeing and vomiting over the edge of the boat? I mean sitting in that mess would have been so GROSS.
(hide spoiler)]

I dunno, I guess the whole thing was too human for my liking. Too ambiguous and vague, too much about how people react when you take away their sight. It was utterly captivating, but only because I was waiting for it to get hectic.

It's a unique story, and it will keep you hooked from start to finish, but it's definitely more thriller than horror. Less gore and mayhem, more subtle chills. I'd still highly recommend it, though, just because of how different it is.

I'm super curious about the film now, though. How do you produce a visual representation of a book that dwells on the fear of being without vision??!

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