According to Netflix, 45 million accounts watched its latest horror film, Bird Box, in its first week. That means 45 million accounts didn't see the movie's monster. Bird Box opted not to show the nightmare-giving creatures plaguing the world, but it sounds like that was for the best. At one point, the film was going to show the creature, but star Sandra Bullock said that it just looked too funny.
It was a green man with a horrific baby face. It was snake-like, and I was like, 'I don't want to see it when it first happens. Just bring it into the room. We'll shoot the scene.' I turn, and he's like this [growling at me.] It's making me laugh. It was just a long fat baby.
Yeah, "long fat baby" doesn't really strike terror into your soul.
In the horror film, anyone who sees the supernatural creatures is given visions of their absolute greatest nightmare, forcing them to commit suicide. Sandra Bullock stars as a mother of two children who must lead her family on a journey to a safe haven while blindfolded (can't see the creature, can't want to kill yourself).
At no point in the film do you actually see the creature's appearance, but that wasn't always going to be the case. Screenwriter Eric Heisserer told Bloody Disgusting that one of the producers forced him to write in a scene where Bullock's Malorie sees the monster's true form.
Apparently, the creature was a snake-like green man with a baby face, and while I'm pretty sure that I would kill myself if I ever saw that, the filmmaker's felt differently. In that same interview, director Susanne Bier added that seeing the funny-looking monster changed the tone of the movie too much.
It so easily becomes funny. We actually shot that and spent a lot of energy on, but every time I saw it, I was like this is not going to be tense. It's just going to be funny.
You could argue that if the design was too funny, they could have just changed it to something else, but I get the sense that they didn't want to show the monster to begin with. Sometimes the unknown is scarier.
Bird Box is getting compared to A Quiet Place because they share some similar plotlines, but the latter opted to show its creatures. That works for that movie, but the nightmare quality of Bird Box justifies not showing the actual creatures.
If you'd like to not see these baby-faced snake men, then you can watch Bird Box on Netflix right now. For everything else that Netflix has to offer, be sure to check out our handy Netflix release guide.
