Many things about the new plastic film Bird Box may make you uncomfortable . There ’s the obvious hooey , like aterrifying menace make over the worldthat kill you if you but look at it , as well as how that menace impacts different people in surprising and scary way .   Then , most interestingly , there ’s how the flick portrays its lead character .

In Bird Box , Sandra Bullock plays Malorie , a loner with stiff beliefs who , we find out early on , has little interest in having a family . However , we also learn early on on that five years into the future she ’ll have two tiddler she ’s taste to save by riding with them , blindfold , down a riverhoping to get to a property where they ’ll all be safe .

As the film go back and onward between Malorie and the kids in the present and the globe crumbling in the past , we see that Malorie may be contract care of the kids not out of love , but out of necessity , which feel awfully cynical in an already depressing office . However , music director Susanne Bier says this coarse , clinical take on maternity in author Eric Heisserer ’s adaption of Josh Malerman ’s 2014 novel is one of the main things that attract her to the flick .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

“ It ’s a deeply interesting take on maternity , ” Bier told io9 . “ And it ’s really a take on motherhood which is right smart more compose and conceived from a distaff position than motherhood has been for hundreds of year . ”

The unimaginative position on maternity which Bier is alluding to is one of overt emotion . A kind of gushy , over - the - top love and nurturing . The flavour most of us get when think of our kinfolk . Which is definitely not Malorie in Bird Box . But Bier says that does n’t mean she is n’t a hard mother .

“ Her paternal take is about ‘ Those kids are going to survive and I ’m going to do whatever it takes for them to outlast , ’ ” she said . “ And that put her in a Department of State of being so determined that she is coarse and brutal , and not inevitably kind , and not necessarily loving or picture her honey , and not allowing herself to feel the love . But she is going to have them survive . ”

William Duplessie

Normally when a movie portrays a female parent number in such an unemotional state , she ’s evil . A scoundrel . And that certainly could be how some people view Malorie at sure points of Bird Box . Bier , however , credits her Pb actressfor reach Malorie such a unique persona , because she expertly threads that acerate leaf of a mother who has her own way of parenting .

“ Becauseit ’s Sandra Bullockyou’ve get no doubt why she does it , ” Beir said . “ Because Sandra is so honest and so sincere and so likable that you kind of bask that . But it ’s a very original unlawful take on maternity which I think is pretty amazing within a big writing style cinema . ”

That big literary genre film , with its complex and rewarding take on maternity , is now pelt on Netflix .

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For more , ensure you ’re following us on our new Instagram @io9dotcom .

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