The ending in the original book is similar but there are important differences that make the outcome written by Malerman much darker and creepy.
Already converted into an authentic audience phenomenon, ‘ Bird Box‘, the film directed by Susanne Bier and starring Sandra Bullock, is one of Netflix’s latest hits. But it appears as though it originally had a much more darker ending than the one that culminates the film.
‘Bird Box’ is based on the homonymous novel by the American author Josh Malerman. At the end of the film, Malorie (Sandra Bullock) and the two protagonist children (Vivien Lyra Blair and Julian Edwards) achieve their goal: to reach a shelter in which there is a community of survivors that has managed to build a safe and free environment from the strange entities that cause certain death when looking at them.
The reason why the survivors managed to evade death is very simple: they are blind. The end of the original book is similar but there are important differences that make the outcome written by Malerman much darker and creepy. Malorie and the children arrive in the Community and yes, the survivors are blind, but they are blind because they themselves self inflicted blindness in order to survive.
Undoubtedly, a more spooky and hopeless ending, something different from what was seen in the film, where the Bullock’s character arrives with her children to a residence of blind people who, for obvious reasons, are the most prepared to survive the new situation.
In an interview for Polygon, Susanne Bier stated that her adaptation is “a little more positive in many aspects” and that it is also “different” to the original novel, although both “are very related.” “The book also has a kind of positive ending and I would not have wanted to do an apocalyptic movie that didn’t have a hopeful ending. In a way, pretty much everything I’ve done has had some sort of a hopeful ending. I’m not particularly interested for the audience to leave, from the cinema or their own screen, with a kind of completely bleak point of view. That’s not really what I believe in,” said the director.
“I’m not particularly interested for the audience to leave, from the cinema or their own screen, with a kind of completely bleak point of view. That’s not really what I believe in. And so for me it was key and, and part of what made me interested in it, was that that if this scary, dystopian story, which actually has a hopeful undercurrent … there is a hopefulness in trust. That is a hopefulness in love,” continued the director.
Directed by Susanne Bier (‘After The Wedding’, ‘In A Better World’) and ‘Bird Box’ starring Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, Jacki Weaver, Rosa Salazar, Tom Hollander, Sarah Paulson and John Malkovich. ‘Bird Box’ is the new success from Netflix , having been seen by 45 million users in its first week on the platform.
